MONDAY, Nov. 16 (HealthDay News) -- During routine colonoscopy, optical diagnosis may be as reliable and more cost-effective for correctly diagnosing small colorectal polyps than conventional histopathology, according to a study published online Nov. 11 in The Lancet Oncology.

Ana Ignjatovic, M.D., of St. Mark's Hospital and Imperial College London, and colleagues compared the diagnosis of 363 colorectal polyps less than 10 mm in 130 patients that were evaluated by white-light colonoscopy, non-magnifying narrow-band imaging, chromoendoscopy, and conventional histopathology.

The researchers found that optical diagnosis accurately identified up to 93 percent of small colorectal polyps (186 of 198 precancerous adenomas and 55 of 62 hyperplastic polyps), which was similar to the overall diagnostic accuracy of standard histopathology. They also found that optical diagnosis allowed 82 patients to be given a follow-up colonoscopy date immediately after the procedure.

"For polyps less than 10 mm in size, in-vivo optical diagnosis seems to be an acceptable strategy to assess polyp histopathology and future surveillance intervals. Dispensing with formal histopathology for most small polyps found at colonoscopy could improve the efficiency of the procedure and lead to substantial savings in time and cost," the authors conclude.

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