Study: Women More Likely to Have Inadequate Sigmoidoscopy

Women are up to twice as likely as men to have inadequate sigmoidoscopy exams for colorectal cancer due to inadequate depth of insertion, according to University of California at San Francisco researchers.

Older people also are less likely to have satisfactory exams, the researchers added.

A sigmoidoscope -- a 60-centimeter-long flexible tube about the thickness of a finger -- is threaded into the patient's rectum. and a tiny video camera lets the doctor examine the wall of the colon for abnormalities such as cancer or polyps.

Reporting in the American Journal of Medicine, the researchers said the number of sigmoidoscopy examinations that fail to attain an adequate depth of insertion increases progressively along with advancing age.

The researchers found the percentage of sigmoidoscopies examinations that failed to reach 50 centimeters into the colon increased from 19 percent in women under 59 years of age to 32 percent in women aged 80 or older.

Those percentages were 10 percent for men in the younger group and 22 percent for men in the older group.

"I had been finding that a lot of my older patients were not getting adequate exams, and I wanted to know whether this was a widespread problem," said researcher Dr. Louise Walter, assistant professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.

"I was initially approaching this as an age issue. But then the gender differences popped up. The most disturbing thing this study shows is that women are twice as likely as men to have an inadequate exam," Walter added.

Other Sources: University of California at San Francisco