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Is there a difference between various stool tests used to screen for colorectal cancer? Elizabeth Tracey reports

If you’re using a fecal test to screen for colorectal cancer, one test or another should perform about the same, right? Not according to a recent study comparing five of these tests in people who then underwent screening colonoscopy. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, describes the results.

Nelson: They took a number of these tests, they are cleared by the Food and Drug administration that allowed to be used as devices and they're cleared for use in the home or at the point of care in your doctor's office. They looked at about 3700 folks who were going to undergo colonoscopy. Turns out about 8 1/2% of them had some sort of lesion that you would treat. 0.2% of them actually had colorectal cancer. They looked at 5 different tests. The specificity of the test that ranged from 85 1/2% to 96.6% and the sensitivity was more substantially different.   :34 

Nelson says it may be worth asking your primary care doctor about tests they use. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.