The Sensitivity and the Specificity of the Fecal Immunochemical Testing in Detecting Colonic Cancerous and Precancerous Lesions among the Lebanese Population

Background: Fecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) is a screening tool used for colorectal cancer (CRC).Research has demonstrated that FIT detects the majority of CRC.Thus, the aim of the current study was to determine the specificity and the sensitivity of FIT test in detecting colonic cancerous and precancerous lesions among the Lebanese population. Subjects and Methods:This was a retrospective study carried out in two Lebanese Hospital, among asymptomatic patients who had underwent both colonoscopy and FIT between January 2016 and December 2021.The following information were collected: age, gender, lifestyle, diet, alcohol and smoking habits, physical activity, clinical symptoms, past medical history, family history of CRC, FIT results, and colonoscopy findings.The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) for FIT, were calculated.Results: A total of 54 patients were included in this study.A portion of 55.6% of patients were males and 44.4% were females.Of all study participants, 20 (37.1%) patients tested positive by FIT and 15 of these patients had positive findings on colonoscopy compared to 5 patients who had no abnormal findings.The sensitivity of FIT in detecting CRC was 38.4% and the specificity was 66.6%.The calculated positive predictive value and negative predictive value were 75.0% and 29.4% respectively.When studying the association of demographic and lifestyle factors among patients with a positive FIT, we failed to find a significant association between all the studied variables and positive results of FIT (gender: p-value = 0.614, family history of CRC: p-value = 1.00, cigarette smoking: p-value = 0.66, healthy diet: p-value = 0.053, and physical activity: p-value = 0.59).Conclusion: FIT had acceptable sensitivity and high specificity in detecting CRC among asymptomatic patients.Additional research is still needed to improve the diagnostic performance of FIT in detecting CRC.