Should Men Begin Colorectal Cancer Screening Before Women?

We have known for decades that men have a higher age-adjusted incidence of colorectal cancer than women as well as a higher prevalence of adenomas and advanced adenomas. Now, a new study has drawn attention to this issue and again raised the question of whether the age of screening onset should be later in women than men.

A cohort of 44,350 asymptomatic persons underwent screening colonoscopy in Austria from 2007 to 2010. Men had a higher prevalence than women of adenomas (24.9% vs. 14.8%), advanced adenomas (8.0% vs. 4.7%), and cancer (1.5% vs. 0.7%). For both advanced adenomas and cancer, the number needed to screen (NNS) among men in their fifties was approximately equal to the NNS among women who were about 10 years older.