What is the advantage of a virtual colonoscopy?
When it comes to the individual patient, none. The government has hoped to find an inexpensive colon cancer screening technique that would be inexpensive, accurate, sensitive, and which would become widely accepted by the public. To this end, the government has funded research to find a “noninvasive” technique that could be used to screen large populations of people at risk for developing colorectal cancer so only a small number would need to go fort the “invasive” procedure of endoscopic colonoscopy. The virtual colonoscopy really does not fulfill this dream, given the human condition and the present state of the technology. Most people who undergo a colonoscopy usually don’t mind the procedure itself; the requirement for a laxative bowel preparation prior to the examination deters the squeamish. The “virtual” examination does not eliminate this problem because it still requires a bowel preparation. The second problem is that most people undergoing standard bowel preparations in the t
