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About eight years ago, maybe a
little longer, we did a study here where we surveyed full-time primary care physicians in
Allegheny County. We got a pretty good response rate. We were specifically interested in
sigmoidoscopy because the PLCO trial was starting up and we wanted to know where we were
at in terms of a baseline for sigmoidoscopy. We found that less than a quarter reported
that they’d had any training in flex sig. Only 22% said they were proficient. 50% said
that they had no equipment available. When we asked them “Do you regularly refer or
schedule patients for screening flexible sigmoidoscopy?” - that is sigmoidoscopy without
signs or symptoms of the disease - only a third said that they did, and half of those said
that they mentioned it to less than five patients a month. So very, very few people were
being encouraged to undergo this testing. |