The fecal occult blood test is one of a number of effective methods for detecting colorectal cancer at an early stage, but nearly 70 percent of the public shun the life-saving test due to reluctance to face their health problems, according to a survey released yesterday by the Taiwan Medical Association.
The survey was conducted among 631 doctors from clinics to help gauge patients’ perceptions of the screening test through the eyes of medical professionals.
Asked to name the reasons stopping patients from undergoing the fecal occult blood test, 72.01 percent of the doctors said patients believed they were healthy, while 67.62 percent avoided the test because they did not want to face any potential health issues, the results showed.
Meanwhile, 47.05 percent of doctors said patients feared a potential ensuing colonoscopy should their test results return positive, 34.04 percent did not have the time and 24.21 percent complained about what they said was an inconvenient testing process, the survey said.
The association said that colorectal cancer patients have outnumbered those with liver cancer since 2006 in Taiwan, with the former type of cancer having been at the top of the 10 most common cancers in the country for years.
“The incidence and mortality rates for colorectal cancer in Taiwan are 1.4 times and 1.7 times those recorded in the US,” the association said.
Despite the Health Promotion Administration’s 2004 policy of offering free fecal occult blood tests to people aged between 50 and 69 biennially, and further expansion of the program in June last year to those aged between 70 and 74, only 22 percent of eligible recipients received the test between 2008 and 2010, compared with 60 percent in the US, it said.
Taiwan Medical Association chairman Su Ching-chuan (蘇清泉) said that of people in the 50 to 74 age group, about one in 30 developed colorectal polyps and one in 300 developed colorectal cancer.
“Many colorectal cancer cases evolved from polyps, which can be picked up by a fecal occult blood test and hence treated earlier,” Su said.
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