Bowel cancer screening ‘could save thousands’

Tens of thousands of lives could be saved over the next two decades by a new bowel cancer screening test.

New research says that if 60 per cent of people eligible for bowel cancer screening went ahead with a “simple test” then there would be 20,000 fewer deaths over the next 20 years.

According to Cancer Research UK the faecal occult blood test (FOBT) has the potential to save 25,000 people from dying if 80 per cent of individuals aged between 60 and 69 used it.

The FOBT allows people to take stool samples in private and then send them for testing, and if blood is found they are invited for a colonoscopy.

Maxine Taylor, the charity’s executive director of policy and communications, said the new predictions “proved how valuable” the NHS bowel cancer screening programme has the potential to become.

Commenting further on the research, Cancer Research UK epidemiologist Professor Max Parkin said: “Our research looked at a realistic scenario where uptake is about 60 per cent and compared those results with an optimistic scenario where uptake could rise to 80 per cent.

“In both cases thousands of deaths could be prevented. But for the purpose of this calculation we assumed 20 per cent of people wouldn’t do this test.”

Colonoscopies routinely pick up small precancerous growths that can be removed and therefore prevent cancer.

The FOBT is said to detect about half of cancers, though researchers used a more conservative estimate of two in five for their calculations.

Bowel cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in Britain, killing 16,000 people out of the 35,000 who are diagnosed with it every year.