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Assessing risk for complications after colonoscopy is difficult, because simply counting postprocedure events does not account for the expected background rate of adverse events. In this retrospective U.S. study, researchers addressed this limitation by using administrative data from 4.5 million people who underwent screening and surveillance colonoscopies during a 10-year period and who served as their own controls. Background event rates for lower gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding, perforation, stroke and transient ischemic attack, acute myocardial infarction (MI), congestive heart failure, arrhythmia, and pneumonia were inferred from the 6-month postcolonoscopy period, after an initial rise in adverse events had stabilized. Excess postcolon…