• Victoria Tang, W John Boscardin, Irena Stijacic-Cenzer, and Sei J Lee.
• San Francisco VA Medical Center, San Francisco, CA 94121, USA Victoria.Tang@ucsf.edu.
• BMJ. 2015 Jan 1;350:h1662.

ObjectiveTo determine the time to benefit of using flexible sigmoidoscopy for colorectal cancer screening.DesignSurvival meta-analysis.Data SourcesA Cochrane Collaboration systematic review published in 2013, Medline, and Cochrane Library databases.Eligibility CriteriaRandomized controlled trials comparing screening flexible sigmoidoscopy with no screening. Trials with fewer than 100 flexible sigmoidoscopy screenings were excluded.ResultsFour studies were eligible (total n = 459,814). They were similar for patients' age (50-74 years), length of follow-up (11.2-11.9 years), and relative risk for colorectal cancer related mortality (0.69-0.78 with flexible sigmoidoscopy screening). For every 1000 people screened at five and 10 years, 0.3 and 1.2 colorectal cancer related deaths, respectively, were prevented. It took 4.3 years (95% confidence interval 2.8 to 5.8) to observe an absolute risk reduction of 0.0002 (one colorectal cancer related death prevented for every 5000 flexible sigmoidoscopy screenings). It took 9.4 years (7.6 to 11.3) to observe an absolute risk reduction of 0.001 (one colorectal cancer related death prevented for every 1000 flexible sigmoidoscopy screenings).ConclusionOur findings suggest that screening flexible sigmoidoscopy is most appropriate for older adults with a life expectancy greater than approximately 10 years.© Tang et al 2015.

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