A Critical Look at Prevention: Colorectal Cancer Screening
Abstract:
This preventive medicine teaching case, part of the Cases in Population-Oriented Prevention series, discusses the concepts of:
- Diagnostic test evaluation
- Prevention
- Screening using the example of colorectal cancer screening
Features of the case include a health policy exercise concerning community screening programs and an exercise in clinical prevention decision-making.
Objectives:
- Calculate the characteristics of diagnostic tests: sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive values
- Evaluate screening tests in terms of their validity, results and generalizability
- Employ the concepts of primary and secondary prevention as they relate to common clinical preventive services
- Describe the appropriate conditions for screening in terms of characteristics of the disease, the patient and the screening test
- Describe the appropriate study design to evaluate the effectiveness of a screening program and discuss the common biases encountered in screening program research
- Evaluate locally obtained survey data about screening rates and attitudes and devise a community response to increase colorectal cancer screening