Abstract
Expenditure of finite health-care resources on practices that have unproven or dubious efficacy needs careful reconsideration. The influence of medicolegal considerations on this aspect of patient management is a reality that needs to be addressed. While improvements in endoscopic techniques such as chromoendoscopy are encouraging, conventional histologic analysis of biopsy samples is suboptimal. One approach-perhaps idealistic-would be to direct resources toward fundamental research and development of better molecular biomarkers of increased risk of colitis-associated cancer. In the meantime, we may have to rely on increased efforts at primary prevention and common sense.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1633-1636 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | American Journal of Gastroenterology |
Volume | 99 |
Issue number | 9 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 2004 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Biological Markers
- Colitis, Ulcerative
- Colonic Neoplasms
- Colonoscopy
- Female
- Humans
- Incidence
- Ireland
- Male
- Microscopy
- Precancerous Conditions
- Primary Prevention
- Risk Assessment