Colon screening took a great leap forward with the FDA approval today of the COLOGARD stool test. This test does genetic screening on your bowel movements to check for genetic defects that are found in cancerous polyps and tissues that are sloughed-off into the bowel movement. Using this $599 test, you will be able potentially to avoid colonoscopy by screening for hidden blood & genetic material in the bowel, to look for the earliest signs of polyp growth or cancer formation.
Barriers to the broad use of this type of testing include: lack of equivalence to colonoscopy (which is still superior to this type of screening for finding cancers and polyps, cost (it’s not cheap…and insurance is not going to pay for this), and the need for patients to handle their own feces to get the sample.
Here is the process for collecting the stool specimen (CLICK>>>>HERE<<<<) Is this too much to ask of our patients…to handle their own poo? I don’t know…but Ben Stiller put it best when he asked on the YOUTUBE BELOW (just click it)