Scientists find room for improvement in colonoscopies

CHICAGO - Colorectal cancer is the second-leading killer among all types of cancer and doctors order over 15-million colonoscopies each year.

Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory looked into the limitations in order to see how colonoscopies can be improved.

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RAND senior statistician Carolyn Rutter discovered that colonoscopies are effective down to a very small lesion size.

"Colonoscopy may not be as effective as we thought to detect these tiny, tiny lesions these are diminutive lesions less than 6 millimeters," she said.

Rutter says that gives scientists an opening to improve colonoscopy, so it can detect smaller lesions.