Women and colonoscopy screening

This study was comprised of 10,164 patients from the PLCO screening trial who had a negative/normal initial screen. These patients were scheduled for repeat flexible sigmoidoscopy three years after the initial screening. Almost 87 percent of eligible patients returned for repeat screening.

Measures of nonadherence with repeat sigmoidoscopy varied significantly according to gender. Compared with men, women missed the year-three clinic almost two times more often than men, and women who attended the year-three clinic refused repeat sigmoidoscopy more than two times more often than men.

Reference: Weissfeld JL, Ling BS, et al. "Adherence to Repeat Screening Flexible Sigmoidoscopy in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial." Cancer. Vol. 94, 2002.

Cancer terms:
Alopecia: Loss of hair. When the doctor says this chemotherapy has less chance of alopecia it means that that particular chemotherapy drug has lower chance of causing hair loss.