Introduction: The impact of lowering the colon cancer screening age from 50 to 45 years on the endoscopist adenoma detection rate (ADR) is not well studied.
Methods: We used average-risk screening colonoscopies submitted to the GI Quality Improvement Consortium registry from 2014 to 2020 among individuals aged 45-75 years. We used the 1-way ANOVA test to determine differences between ADRs among 45-49-year-old, 50-54-year-old, and 50-75-year-old individuals.
Results: A total of 2,806,539 screening colonoscopies were performed by 814 endoscopists. The mean ADR in the 45-49-year-old group was 28.6% compared with 31.8% for the 50-54-year-old group (P < 0.001) and 36.3% for the 50-75-year-old group (P < 0.001).
Discussion: Endoscopists might see a small drop in their ADR once a higher proportion of 45-49-year-old patients start undergoing screening colonoscopy.
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