Could more targeted screening be helpful in colorectal cancer? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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A new blood test used to screen people for colorectal cancer just isn’t ready to replace colonoscopy or fecal immunochemical tests, since these are capable of detecting early lesions that respond best to treatment. That’s according to Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins, who also suggests a couple of other strategies.

Nelson: The other thing you can really wonder which is everything works better if you can load up who you screen being people who are more likely to have a problem and you can do less things to people who are not likely to have a problem. If you can head in that direction one could wonder are there combinations of things, in other words if you get a colonoscopy at age 45 and there's nothing that's I mean could you then just go with fit testing, blood testing, on the other hand if you had some polyp scene should this be someone that was followed in a different way.           :29

People with a family history of colorectal cancer should definitely be screened using the more established methods, Nelson says, and as we begin to understand more of the risk factors for the disease those who manifest them would also be examined more closely. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.