Helen MacDonald

And I think you're right, Carl, there's a tension between doing a big study...

And there's a tension between then having a study that's maybe more in depth, but it's small.

And then you have reviewers saying, well, this is very small.

You know, I think it's kind of it's treading a fine line, isn't it?

This is one piece of information and it is a big data piece of information and it needs to be triangulated with other information that's collected in different ways.

And goodbye from me.

Happy new year.

See you in 2020.

You're getting more important every time you come on this show.

I'm Hannah MacDonald, UK Research Editor at the BMJ, and I also trained as a GP.

Yes, they're very red.

They're some of our most read content and I have another one for you.

So this one is looking at the pros and cons of colorectal cancer screening in otherwise asymptomatic people who are over 50 and looking at whether it's worth it and if it's worth it, then which test is best.

There are various options.

You can do faecal immunochemical testing every year, every two years.

You can have a one-off sigmoidoscopy or you can have a one-off colonoscopy.

And at the moment, organisations around the world do tend to recommend screening, but there's quite a lot of variation on who gets screened, what test is used.

In some places it's quite systematic and offered to everybody and in other places it's quite opportunistic.

And uptake varies quite a bit and hovers around 50% suggesting that there's quite a bit of variation in how people out there value this offer that's made to them.

And the rapid recommendations team looked at this issue because there were some new trials that came out looking at long term outcomes on sigmoidoscopy screening published over the last couple of years, which suggested that up to 15 years later, it was still worthwhile having screening done.