Oldie but goodie? Do attending endoscopists really need their fellows?

In their retrospective study of more than 2000 colonoscopies, Bitar et al1 showed that adenoma detection rate (ADR) was not increased by the participation of fellows during colonoscopy. This finding prompted us to review our past 2 consecutive years of colonoscopy data of 2241 screening, surveillance, and diagnostic examinations (1580; 70.5% fellow-involved), inflammatory bowel disease evaluation and obstruction cases excluded. ADR, mean adenoma per colonoscopy, and examination completion rate were not different between the fellow-involved and the attending endoscopist-only groups (27.8% vs 26.1%, 0.45 ± 0.93 vs 0.44 ± 0.98 and 95.3% vs 94.6% [P = .51], respectively).

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