• Hamideh Salimzadeh, Catherine Sauvaget, Alireza Delavari, Anahita Sadeghi, Mohammad Amani, Sepideh Salimzadeh, Azita Karimi, Ali Ghanbari Motlagh, Eric Lucas, Partha Basu, and Reza Malekzadeh.
• Digestive Oncology Research Centre, Digestive Disease Research Institute, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
• Arch Iran Med. 2023 Mar 1; 26 (3): 138146138-146.

BackgroundColorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer in Iran, where there is no organised CRC-screening programme. This study aimed to evaluate feasibility of CRC screening using a qualitative fecal immunochemical test (FIT) among Iranian average-risk adults.MethodsIn this feasibility study, 7039 individuals aged 50-75 years were invited by community health workers (CHWs) in southern Tehran and its suburban districts between April 2018 and November 2019. The CHWs performed a qualitative FIT with cut-off level 50 ng Hb/mL buffer and referred those with positive-FIT for colonoscopy to the endoscopy center of Shariati hospital in Tehran. Outcomes included acceptance rate, FIT positivity rate, colonoscopy compliance, detection rates and positive predictive values (PPVs) with 95% confidence interval for CRC and advanced adenomas (AAs).ResultsAcceptance rate at initial invitation was 71.7%. From 4974 average-risk adults (1600 males and 3374 females) who were offered FIT, 96.8% (n=4813) provided valid samples, of whom 471 (9.8%) tested positive. Among FIT-positive participants, 150 (31.8%) underwent colonoscopy; CRC was detected in 2.0% (n=3) and adenomas in 27.3% (n=41). Detection rate of CRC and AAs per 1000-FIT-screened participants was 0.6 (0.1-1.8) [males: 0.7 (0.01-3.6), females: 0.6 (0.07-2.0)] and 4.2 (2.5-6.4) [males: 5.9 (2.6-11.0), females: 3.4 (1.7-6.0)], respectively. PPVs were 2.0% (0.4-5.7) for CRC and 13.3% (8.3-19.8) for AAs. There was no association between gender and the studied outcomes.ConclusionOur results partially support the feasibility of scaling up organized CRC-screening through the existing healthcare system in Iran; it remains to be discussed carefully to ensure the capacity of healthcare system for adequate colonoscopy services.© 2023 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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