Does a pre-training program influence colonoscopy proficiency during fellowship?

Objectives The objective of this study was to determine whether a pre-training program influences the entire learning process and overall proficiency of colonoscopy during fellowship. Methods From March 2011 to February 2013, a total of 28 first-year gastrointestinal fellows were trained in colonoscopy at a single tertiary center. Before entering their fellowship training, all fellows were board certified in internal medicine, but had no experience performing a full colonoscopy. Endoscopic quality indices were prospectively measured throughout the first training year and were compared between two groups, "pre-trained" fellows (n = 14), who had more than 100 cases of upper endoscopy experience and colonoscopy observation before starting their fellowship, and the "not pre-trained" group (n = 14), who had less experience. Results A total of 15,494 colonoscopies were evaluated and 5,411 were screening colonoscopies. There were no significant differences in the overall quality index between the pre-trained and not pre-trained groups. However, the improvement in the adenoma detection rate (ADR) from the first half of the year to the latter half was significantly higher for the pretrained group compared to the not pre-trained group (28.6% to 34.5% vs. 36.7% to 28.3%, respectively, P = 0.007). Multivariate analysis showed that pre-training before learning colonoscopy was the only significant factor for high ADR in the second half of the year (11.666 ± 4.251 [B±SE], P = 0.012). Conclusion Sufficient observation of colonoscopy and experience of upper endoscopy before colonoscopy training might facilitate improvement of fellows' manual and cognitive colonoscopic skills during the learning period.