Quote:
Originally Posted by lakefront
Doc told me Cologuard has 30% false positives, so best of luck.  |
Screening tests are used to determine if there is a need to move forward with a more invasive, risky, and expensive test like colonoscopy. All screening tests have a high false positive rate. For instance, Mammogram has a 95% false positive rate.
You want a very sensitive test for screening, one that reliably detects every case of whatever you are looking for. But as a test becomes highly sensitive, false positive rates go up. 30% is actually really good and i would personally do cologuard if i qualified for it. It’s not for higher risk individuals, in my case family history.
You do Cologuard to see if there might be cancer or precancerous polyps, essentially identifying who needs the more invasive colonoscopy procedure. For those that use it, a high number are able to skip colonoscopy. Colonoscopy is more than inconvenience, people experience complications with anesthesia and sometimes end up with a perforated bowel and a long hospital stay (or worse). It is absolutely the gold standard to detect and prevent colon cancer, but the idea with stool dna tests is to widdle down the number of people who have to go through the risk of colonoscopy.
Sorry for geeking out. Carry on.