Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Aug 15, 2016; 8(8): 629-634
Published online Aug 15, 2016. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v8.i8.629
Academic hospital staff compliance with a fecal immunochemical test-based colorectal cancer screening program
Georgia Vlachonikolou, Paraskevas Gkolfakis, Athanasios D Sioulas, Ioannis S Papanikolaou, Anastasia Melissaratou, Giannis-Aimant Moustafa, Eleni Xanthopoulou, Gerasimos Tsilimidos, Ioanna Tsironi, Paraskevas Filippidis, Chrysoula Malli, George D Dimitriadis, Konstantinos Triantafyllou
Georgia Vlachonikolou, Paraskevas Gkolfakis, Athanasios D Sioulas, Ioannis S Papanikolaou, Anastasia Melissaratou, Giannis-Aimant Moustafa, Eleni Xanthopoulou, Gerasimos Tsilimidos, Ioanna Tsironi, Paraskevas Filippidis, Chrysoula Malli, George D Dimitriadis, Konstantinos Triantafyllou, Hepatogastroenterology Unit, Second Department of Internal Medicine and Research Institute, Attikon University General Hospital, Medical School, University of Athens, 12462 Athens, Greece
Author contributions: Vlachonikolou G searched the literature, drafted and finally approved the manuscript; Gkolfakis P analyzed the data, reviewed the draft and finally approved the manuscript; Sioulas AD, Papanikolaou IS, Malli C and Dimitriadis GD made critical revisions, reviewed the draft and finally approved the manuscript; Melissaratou A, Moustafa GA, Xanthopoulou E, Tsilimidos G, Tsironi I and Filippidis P collected the data, reviewed the draft and finally approved the manuscript; Triantafyllou K conceived the idea, designed the study, reviewed the statistical methods and the draft and finally approved the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the “Attikon” University General Hospital.
Informed consent statement: All individuals that participated in the study provided their written informed consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None to declare.
Data sharing statement: There is no additional data available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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/
Correspondence to: Athanasios D Sioulas, MD, PhD, Hepatogastroenterology Unit, Second Department of Internal Medicine and Research Institute, Attikon University General Hospital, Medical School, University of Athens, 1 Rimini Street, 12462 Athens, Greece. athsioulas@yahoo.gr
Telephone: +30-210-5832090 Fax: +30-210-5326422
Received: February 23, 2016
Peer-review started: February 24, 2016
First decision: April 15, 2016
Revised: April 26, 2016
Accepted: June 2, 2016
Article in press: June 2, 2016
Published online: August 15, 2016
Processing time: 168 Days and 2.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The fecal immunochemical test (FIT) for hemoglobin represents an attractive alternative to colonoscopy for population colorectal cancer (CRC) screening programs, since it combines high diagnostic effectiveness and wide acceptance, probably in relation to its non-invasive nature. Accordingly, we assessed the compliance of the staff of an Academic Hospital with a CRC screening program by means of FIT. Despite the well-organized, guided and supervised provision of the service, our results indicated very low overall uptake rate of the test and, interestingly, significantly less compliance of physicians and nurses as compared to the rest Hospital personnel.