Student or educator? Sign up with your school email and get 6 months of Pro free.
CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 990

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 39 of the 39 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Cochrane Systematic Review of Colorectal Cancer Screening Using the Fecal Occult Blood Test (Hemoccult): An Update

Hewitson, Paul, Glasziou, Paul, Watson, Eila, Towler, Bernie, Irwig, Les·2008·The American Journal of Gastroenterology
DOI 10.1111/j.1572-0241.2008.01875.x
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Reducing mortality from colorectal cancer (CRC) may be achieved by the introduction of population-based screening programs. The aim of the systematic review was to update previous research to determine whether screening for CRC using the fecal occult blood test (FOBT) reduces CRC mortality and to consider the benefits, harms, and potential consequences of screening. METHODS: We searched eight electronic databases (Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsychINFO, AMED, SIGLE, and HMIC). We identified nine articles describing four randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving over 320,000 participants with follow-up ranging from 8 to 18 yr. The primary analyses used intention to screen and a secondary analysis adjusted for nonattendance. We calculated the relative risks and risk differences for each trial, and then overall, using fixed and random effects models. RESULTS: Combined results from the four eligible RCTs indicated that screening had a 16% reduction in the relative risk (RR) of CRC mortality (RR 0.84, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.78-0.90). There was a 15% RR reduction (RR 0.85, 95% CI 0.78-0.92) in CRC mortality for studies that used biennial screening. When adjusted for screening attendance in the individual studies, there was a 25% RR reduction (RR 0.75, 95% CI 0.66-0.84) for those attending at least one round of screening using the FOBT. There was no difference in all-cause mortality (RR 1.00, 95% CI 0.99-1.02) or all-cause mortality excluding CRC (RR 1.01, 95% CI 1.00-1.03). CONCLUSIONS: The present review includes seven new publications and unpublished data concerning CRC screening using FOBT. This review confirms previous research demonstrating that FOBT screening reduces the risk of CRC mortality. The results also indicate that there is no difference in all-cause mortality between the screened and nonscreened populations.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1111/j.1572-0241.2008.01875.x

Cites

39 of 39 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 39 references

Cited by

See all 990

Metadata

Authors
Hewitson, P., Glasziou, P., Watson, E., Towler, B., & Irwig, L.
Venue
The American Journal of Gastroenterology
Publisher
Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Published
2008-06
Volume
103
Issue
6
Pages
1541-1549
ISSN
  • 0002-9270 (ISSN-L)
  • 1572-0241
DOI
10.1111/j.1572-0241.2008.01875.x
OpenAlex
W2097680546
Cited by
990
References
39
FWCI
2.53
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review

How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Cochrane Systematic Review of Colorectal Cancer Screening Using the Fecal Occult Blood Test (Hemoccult): An Update. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1572-0241.2008.01875.x
The paper
Hewitson, P., Glasziou, P., Watson, E., Towler, B., & Irwig, L. (2008). Cochrane Systematic Review of Colorectal Cancer Screening Using the Fecal Occult Blood Test (Hemoccult): An Update. The American Journal of Gastroenterology. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1572-0241.2008.01875.x

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.