CRC Screening: 45 Is the New 50, and 85 Is the New 75

CRC Screening Guidelines: 45 Is the New 50, and 85 Is the New 75

Neil Osterweil

June 03, 2021

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Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Find an accurate, completely noninvasive method for colorectal cancer screening and you'll probably win the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology.

But until then, we'll have to make do with colonoscopy, fecal immunochemical testing (FIT), and other messy but necessary means for preventing full-blown CRC and reducing the risk of CRC morbidity and mortality. And start turning to them earlier in patients' lives.

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has issued an update of its 2016 recommendations for CRC screening, for the first time advising that screening for all average-risk adults begin at age 45. This new recommendation is in line with the guidelines issued by the American Cancer Society, which were updated in 2018, to reflect the inescapable truth that CRC is increasingly being diagnosed at a younger age.

Not to be left out, the US Multi-Society Task Force (MSTF) — which represents the American College of Gastroenterology, the American Gastroenterological Association, and the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy — issued a statementsupporting lowering the age of initial screening in normal-risk adults to 45, and promised that an update of their 2017 guidelines would include the new recommendation.

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