Online Colorectal Cancer Risk Calculator Developed at Cleveland Clinic

Researchers at Cleveland Clinic have developed a tool called CRC-PRO that allows physicians to quickly and accurately predict an individual's risk of colorectal cancer. The research is scheduled for publication in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

CRC-PRO, or Colorectal Cancer Predicted Risk Online, is designed to help both patients and physicians determine when screening for colorectal cancer is appropriate, according to the researchers. With this new tool, physicians will be better able to identify who is truly at risk and when screenings for patients are necessary, they say. Current guidelines recommend patients are screened at the age of 50.

To develop the calculator, the researchers, led by Brian Wells, M.D., Ph.D., of the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences in Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute, analyzed data on over 180,000 patients from a longitudinal study conducted at the University of Hawaii. Patients were followed for up to 11.5 years to determine which factors were highly associated with the development of colorectal cancer.

“Creating a risk calculator that includes multiple risk factors offers clinicians a means to more accurately predict risk than the simple age-based cutoffs currently used in clinical practice,” said Dr. Wells. “Clinicians could decide to screen high-risk patients earlier than age 50, while delaying or foregoing screening in low-risk individuals.”

Wells and his colleagues hope that their new, user-friendly calculator will help improve the efficiency of colorectal cancer screenings. They also believe prediction tools like this can help lower healthcare costs by cutting down on unnecessary testing.