Editorial: Taking FIT to the People: Out of the Office and Into the Mail

Colorectal cancer (CRC) screening is most commonly performed in the United States using an opportunistic approach: patients coming to a physician’s office for other unrelated reasons are offered screening with either fecal occult blood tests or, more commonly, a referral for colonoscopy. This approach has been effective to a point. CRC screening rates are increasing, but are still suboptimal and vary across different regions of the United States. Mailed fecal immunochemical test (FIT) outreach has the potential to allow more consistent CRC screening, by moving beyond opportunistic, office visit-based screening, to an organized approach. The study by van Roon et al. in this issue of the American Journal of Gastroenterology demonstrates that mailing FIT collection devices will not result in decreased sensitivity for 10-14 days following the specimen collection.

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