Purpose: High prevalence of colon carcinoma explains the continued high mortality rate of this disease.Utilizing a strategy of virtual colonoscopy (VC) in patients aged over 50 years with optical colonoscopy (OC) following-up for removal of detected adenomatous polyps may result in lowering the colon cancer death rate. However, VC diagnostic potential has not been widely recognized yet.
Material and methods: This article reviews the currently available in diagnostic options in colorectal neoplasms and discusses their advantages and drawbacks.
Results: VC has many advantages over the existing options and its several drawbacks can be mitigated so that it would become a valuable diagnostic modality. A strategy that utilizes VC for screening of patients over the age of 50 years and OC for screening high-risk individuals and those with positive VC findings would result in a significantly reduced colon cancer mortality rate.
Conclusion: Both OC and VC (i.e., CTC and MRC) progress toward the clinical needs as new technologies are developed and applied to overcome the drawbacks of these diagnostic methods. Each of them plays a unique role for colon cancer prevention.
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