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Colorectal Cancer Calculator

Owned by Tracy Russell
Last updated: Jul 07, 2023
2 min read

Overview

The Colorectal Cancer calculator uses the Colorectal Cancer eRAT to determine a patient’s risk of having Colorectal cancer based on the most recent data received from the clinical system for that patient and additional data that may be added by the user.

Usage

The Colorectal cancer calculator is designed to be used by a clinician to calculate a patient’s risk score of Colorectal cancer.

Technical Specification

Mandatory Items

  • The patient must be aged 40 or over.

  • All other values and symptoms are optional and assumed not to exist if not supplied.

Anaemia Risk

  • The eRAT risk score for colorectal cancer also considers an anaemia risk, which is calculated using the patient’s gender, whether or not they are iron deficient, their age group and haemoglobin readings.
    If this risk is higher than the colorectal risk then the anaemia risk is used instead.

  • If a haemoglobin reading is not supplied then the anemia risk is not calculated.

  • Nationally the current units of measure for haemoglobin changed from g/dl to g/l.
    The CDS tool takes account of this so that either set of units can be interpreted correctly.
    If a haemoglobin value is less than 35 then it is deemed to be g/dl and is converted to g/l by multiplying by 10.

  • For men: If the g/l value is between 0 and 100 then the haemoglobin level is considered "very low". Values 100 or above, but less than 135 then are considered "low”.

  • For women: If the g/l value is between 0 and 100 then the haemoglobin level is considered "very low". Values 100 or above, but less than 115 then are considered "low”.

  • A patient is considered to have signs of iron deficiency if have low haemoglobin levels as well as a Mean Corpuscular Volume < 80 or a Ferritin < 20.

Note that an 'Iron deficiency anaemia' code (e.g. 7522002%,87522002) in the patient’s medical record will NOT be used to determine iron deficiency anaemia. This is because a definitive criteria is used rather than the unknown criteria that the clinician used at the time of recording that code.

Risk Scoring

  • A risk greater than 5% is considered HIGH (RED)

  • A risk score of between 2% and 5% inclusive is considered MODERATE (AMBER)

  • A score of less than 2% is considered LOW (NO COLOUR)

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