Colorectal screening: personal history of colorectal cancer

Follow-up after apparently curative resection

• start follow-up at a clinic visit 4-6 weeks after potentially curative treatment
  
  
• offer patients regular surveillance with: a minimum of two CTs of the chest, abdomen, and pelvis in the first 3 years and regular serum carcinoembryonic antigen tests (at least every 6 months in the first 3 years)
  
  
• offer a surveillance colonoscopy at 1 year after initial treatment. If this investigation is normal consider further colonoscopic follow-up after 5 years, and thereafter as determined by cancer networks. The timing of surveillance for patients with subsequent adenomas should be determined by the risk status of the adenoma
  
  
• start reinvestigation if there is any clinical, radiological or biochemical suspicion of recurrent disease

Reference:

• NICE (December 2014). Colorectal cancer.