Surveillance for gastrointestinal malignancies

Figure 1 Risk stratification is a step-wise approach towards identifying high-risk individuals where surveillance for gastrointestinal cancers is truly needed in order to detect any neoplastic growth at early stages. The initial step is to define a target population (Y) in the general population (X) where screening strategies would be applied. Based upon findings of the screening tests in target population, subjects deemed to be at high-risk for developing a gastrointestinal (GI) malignancy (Z) would need repeated screening tests at suitable intervals (surveillance), and this would result in detection of potentially curable early stage cancerous lesions in certain individuals (C).