Abstract
We would like to thank you for your letter, 1 serving as a comment to the European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ESGE) Guidelines on performance measures for lower gastrointestinal endoscopy. We have read the report on European Colonoscopy Quality Investigation (ECQI) Group with a great pleasure, as the aim of the ESGE guidelines is to create space for international cooperation in the field of quality improvement and trigger adoption of key performance measures.
What was stressed throughout the guidelines was the importance of at least periodical monitoring of performance measures both on individual, as well as on service level. Such initiatives as ECQI database are absolutely one of the ways to go, as they allow for such monitoring. We believe, that the first step for quality improvement is identification of areas, where underperformance is notable. Your findings clearly show fields in need of quality improvement, however the more important aspect is dissemination among collegues the idea of quality monitoring. It is striking, how few endoscopist routinely measure two most renowned parameters - cecum intubation rate (CIR) (55% of survey responders) and adenoma detection rate (ADR) (only 18% of responders!).
Your results clearly show that we need to strive for (a) widespread adoption of key performance measures and (b) development of quality improvement interventions. The ECQI platform can help reaching these goals.
Thank you again for your comment and for providing information on quality improvement initiative open for endoscopy community.