Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 28, 2020; 26(48): 7652-7663
Published online Dec 28, 2020. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v26.i48.7652
Impact of colorectal cancer screening participation in remote northern Canada: A retrospective cohort study
Heather A Smith, Andrew D Scarffe, Nicole Brunet, Cait Champion, Kami Kandola, Alisha Tessier, Robin Boushey, Craig Kuziemsky
Heather A Smith, Department of Surgery, University of Ottawa, Ottawa K1Y4E9, Ontario, Canada
Heather A Smith, Andrew D Scarffe, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, Ottawa K1N6N5, Ontario, Canada
Nicole Brunet, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa K1Y4E9, Ontario, Canada
Cait Champion, Department of Surgery, Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Sudbury P3E2C6, Ontario, Canada
Kami Kandola, Department of Health and Social Services, Government of the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife X1A1P5, Northwest Territories, Canada
Alisha Tessier, Department of Surgery, Stanton Territorial Health Authority, Yellowknife X1A0H1, Northwest Territories, Canada
Robin Boushey, Division of General Surgery, University of Ottawa, Ottawa K1H 8L6, Ontario, Canada
Craig Kuziemsky, Office of Research Services, MacEwan University, Edmonton T5J4S2, Alberta, Canada
Author contributions: Smith HA and Kuziemsky C designed the research study; Smith HA, Kandola K, Tessier A, and Brunet N performed the data collection; Smith HA and Scarffe AD conducted the data analysis; Smith HA, Scarffe AD, and Kuziemsky C wrote the manuscript; and all authors have read and approve the final manuscript.
Supported by University of Ottawa Telfer School of Management Research Grant, No. 603430; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Innovation Grant, No. RGPIN-2019-04884; and the Northern Scientific Training Program.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Aurora College Research Ethics Committee, protocol No. 20190404.
Informed consent statement: Our data collection was only retrospective and, therefore, no participant consent was required for ethics approval of this study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors confirm no conflict of interests.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at hsmit037@uottawa.ca
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Heather A Smith, MD, Academic Research, Department of Surgery, University of Ottawa, 975 Parkdale Ave, WM150b, Ottawa K1Y4E9, Ontario, Canada. hsmit037@uottawa.ca
Received: September 5, 2020
Peer-review started: September 5, 2020
First decision: September 30, 2020
Revised: October 15, 2020
Accepted: November 21, 2020
Article in press: November 21, 2020
Published online: December 28, 2020
Core Tip

Core Tip: This 5-year retrospective cohort study evaluates the participation and impact of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening guidelines in a northern region of Canada. We evaluated CRC screening results of 6817 participants January, 2014 to March, 2019. We compared the stage and location of screen-detected CRC to clinically-detected CRC cases in 2014-2016. We observed no difference in screen-detected CRC vs clinically detected cases. During the 5-year observation period, we observed a higher incidence of advance neoplasia than anticipated, especially among patients presenting with signs and symptoms of cancer at the time of screening, who experienced long colonoscopy wait-times, and/or who identified as indigenous.