I'm also on warfarin and have done that test as well, it came back negative. I've also had a colonoscopy and if you are going down that tube you may wish to read these blog posts
Eventually one finds that some sort of small surgery is needed, for those of us on warfarin (perhaps after a large surgery such as a heart v...
cjeastwd.blogspot.com
A post on the management of Anti Coagulation Therapy (ACT) by Vitamin K Antagonist (VKA) - Warfarin I've decided to call this the rapid Du...
cjeastwd.blogspot.com
However there are false positives with that particular test. Given my personal experience I wanted to try the screening, and I found this interesting and it guided my next assessment
www.choosingwisely.org.au
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners
Recommendations from the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) on treating hypertension or hyperlipidaemia, prescribing benzodiazepines, self-monitoring of blood glucose, proton pump inhibitor therapy and screening for vascular disease. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) is Australia’s largest professional general practice organisation and represents urban and rural general practitioners. We represent more than 30,000 members working in or towards a career in general practice. There are more than 125 million general practice consultations taking place annually in Australia.
RACGP guidelines recommend two-yearly faecal occult blood testing (FOBT) from 50-75 years of age. The best available data to 2011 suggests 13% of this group were instead over-screened using colonoscopy.
National Bowel Cancer Screening Program (NBCSP) data shows that, per 10,000 people in this group followed up for an average 18 months, 6 will die from bowel cancer if unscreened. If screened with colonoscopy, 2.3 will die (1.5 from bowel cancer plus 0.8 from colonoscopy complications), compared to just 1.9 deaths for FOBT. A colonoscopy also risks bowel perforation (7 per 10,000), involves bowel preparation, and costs around $3000. NBCSP monitoring shows that a negative FOBT is 99.9% specific in ruling out bowel cancer.
Recommendation released March 2016
Supporting evidence
- RACGP, Red Book Taskforce. Guidelines for preventive activities in general practice. Royal Australian College of General Practitioners: Melbourne (2012). Available from: RACGP - Colorectal cancer
- Ouakrim DA et al. Screening practices of Australian men and women categorized as ‘‘at or slightly above average risk’’ of colorectal cancer. Cancer Causes Control 2012;23:1853–1864. (The 13% figure taken from the latest, unpublished data, received via correspondence from the primary author, Oct 2015).
- Emery J. NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence for Optimising Colorectal Cancer Screening at the University of Melbourne. AIHW data, National Bowel Cancer Screening Program.
- Viiala CH, et al. Complication rates of colonoscopy in an Australian teaching hospital environment. Internal Medicine Journal 2003;33:355-9.
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Analysis of bowel cancer outcomes for the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program. 2014 Canberra: AIHW cat. no. CAN 87. Available from: http