A Practical Approach for Colorectal Cancer Screening

This work was supported by grants from the American Gastroenterological Association Research Scholar Award (JKL), and from the National Cancer Institute (U54 CA163262) Colorectal cancer remains a public health burden in the United States. Although randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that screening reduces colorectal cancer incidence and mortality, a large proportion of Americans remain unscreened. National efforts are underway to help increase our colorectal cancer screening rates to 80% by 2018. In this article, we will review several practical strategies for improving colorectal cancer screening in the average-risk population such as including patient preferences, promoting fecal immunochemical test as a screening option, and implementing an organized screening program. In addition, we will discuss practical approaches for colorectal cancer prevention in the increased or high-risk population.