In reply
We agree that the value and the cost-effectiveness of broadening colorectal cancer (CRC) screening practice to all young adults remain to be determined. Our current analysis,1 the largest cohort study to date that examined the problem of CRC incidence among adults younger than 50 years, highlights the steadily increasing incidence of CRC in this patient population and adds to recent findings from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program.2-4 Taken together, we hope that this alarming epidemiologic trend would no longer be dismissed as unimportant. It is our opinion that this observed incidence trend merits greater vigilance in evaluating symptoms consistent with CRC in the young adult population, when health care professionals encounter such a clinical situation.