Attending the British Society of Gastroenterology Annual Conference

By Dr Nick Burr, Clinical Research Fellow

I recently attended the British Society of Gastroenterology Annual Conference in sunny Liverpool. It was a great opportunity to present the work I have been undertaking investigating bowel cancers that occur after a colonoscopy test. I was lucky enough to win a presentation prize for the talk. Colonoscopies are the current "best-test" for diagnosing bowel cancer, but there are cases when cancers are potentially missed and these are called post-colonoscopy cancers. We have shown that the rate of these cancers in falling in England in recent years but there is marked variation between the best and worst performing colonoscopy providers. This is an important finding as some of these cancers may to be due to avoidable reasons. The presentation prompted many questions and heated discussion. Post-colonoscopy cancers are increasingly being recognised as a benchmark for the standard of colonoscopy, and we need to investigate the reasons for missed cancers and try to reduce the variation in rates.