Dr. Perry Pickhardt, Professor in the Department of Radiology and Chief of Gastrointestinal Imaging, will be delivering the British Institute of Radiology (BIR) Canon Mayneord Lecture at the upcoming 2018 UK Radiological and Radiation Oncology Congress taking place in Liverpool, England. His lecture is titled “The Natural History of Colorectal Neoplasia.”
According to the BIR, the Canon Mayneord Memorial Lecture is “an annual award made to an individual or a group of collaborators in recognition of recent or current contributions in the wide and expanding field of radiology.”
Pickhardt was also first author on a study of CT colonography (CTC) performance in detecting polyps and cancer in older adults which was featured in an AuntMinnie.com article in early May. The study, published in the American Journal of Roentgenology, was a meta-analysis of existing CT colonography studies published between 1994 and 2017 which had data on senior-age adults. 34 studies were examined which included a total of over 18,000 senior-age adults. The study found that colorectal cancer screening using CT colonography was even more effective in finding cancer in senior-age adults than younger individuals.
One of the important effects of the study is the implication this research will have on the decision of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as to whether they will begin covering the payment for colorectal cancer screening. The article notes, “A primary reason for the decision by CMS not to offer this service to Medicare patients is a supposed lack of generalizable evidence regarding the effectiveness of CT colonography for the Medicare population.” By showing the effectiveness of CT colonography in the Medicare population in this study, Pickhardt believes “these results should open the door for reconsideration of the national coverage determination for CTC screening of Medicare beneficiaries by the CMS,” a major step in the mainstream adoption of CT colonography.