Colonoscopy is widely accepted as the gold standard for screening, surveillance, and diagnosis of lower GI diseases. However, endoscopy technology has not changed significantly in decades and interval cancers still occur1. In a tandem study using traditional, forward-viewing (TFV) endoscopes, Rex et al. found they missed 24% of the adenomas in the first colonoscopy. Since that landmark study, other technologies have shown the miss rate for TFV to be 31%2.
In another multi-center tandem trial, the Fuse® endoscope system demonstrated the miss rate on adenomas with TFV was 41%. Out of 88 patients, a total of 48 adenomas were observed. TFV identified 28 adenomas. Fuse observed an additional 20 adenomas. This means an additional 69% more adenomas were detected by Fuse that traditional, forward-viewing endoscopes missed3. Conversely, when the patient received a colonoscopy with Fuse first, followed by TFV, the researchers had an adenoma miss rate of only 7%3.