便潜血検査は進行癌では陽性のことが多いのですが、小さな早期癌や平べったい病変（平坦型腫瘍）では感度がよくありません。大腸癌の危険性をもたれている方は便潜血検査が陰性でも一度、精密検査を受けられた方が安心でしょう。

また逆に便潜血検査が陽性とでてもかならずしも大腸癌があるとはいえません。痔によるものであることが多いです。決して癌ノイローゼになることなく御気軽に検査を受けてください。

参考

Int J Cancer 1997 Oct 9;73(2):220-224 Colorectal cancer mass-screening: estimation of faecal occult blood test sensitivity, taking into account cancer mean sojourn time. Launoy G, Smith TC, Duffy SW, Bouvier V Registre des cancers digestifs du Calvados, CJF INSERM 9603, Caen, France. Mass screening using the faecal occult blood test (FOBT) can reduce mortality from colorectal cancer. Reliable estimation of FOBT sensitivity is crucial in assessing the potential effectiveness of a mass-screening procedure. Available estimates could be inaccurate because they neglect the temporal aspect of screening. The aim of our study was to estimate the sensitivity of the FOBT in mass screening for colorectal cancer, taking into account the duration of the pre-clinical phase of the disease assessed by the mean sojourn time (MST), and to assess whether MST and FOBT sensitivity differ according to cancer subsite. We analysed data taken from the first round of the mass-screening programme of the department of Calvados (France), involving 164,364 subjects of whom 43.4% participated in FOB screening. MST and sensitivity were estimated using a simple empirical approach, a traditional maximum likelihood method and log-linear modelling using the Bayesian technique of Gibbs sampling. MST was estimated as between 4.5 and 5 years for all subsites combined. According to the Gibbs sampling method, MSTs were 3.5, 6.4 and 2.6 years for proximal colon, distal colon and rectal cancer, respectively. Our estimation methods give a low sensitivity for the FOBT (50%), results for different subsites being closer to each other, slightly higher for proximal cancer. Our results strongly suggest that tumour growth rates are very different according to subsite, slowest for distal cancer and speediest for rectal cancer. Consideration of FOBT sensitivity without MST appears unreliable. Our results by subsite suggest that combining FOBT and sigmoidoscopy could be a good strategy for colorectal cancer screening.

大腸癌に対する便潜血検査（FOBT）の感度が５０％であるというのが、この論文の要旨です。すなわち、大腸癌の患者さんのうち半分は便潜血検査では見逃されてしまうのです。より、小さな病変である前癌状態（ポリープ）では、さらに感度が低いといわれています。