English patients ‘miss out on bowel cancer screening’

Many people in England are missing out on important bowel cancer screening tests because of the Department of Health’s insistence that they should be limited to people aged between 60 and 69-years-old, according to a new report.

The Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB) has highlighted the bowel cancer screening disparity between England and Scotland, where the recommended age group for testing is between 50 to 74-years-old.

Since up to 16,000 people in the UK die from bowel cancer each year, this difference could be costing lives, the journal stated.

Ike Iheanacho, editor of DTB, remarked: “It is unfair that depending on where you live you may miss out on crucial health screening – national screening of the population should mean just that – with the same criteria for all.”

“It is worrying that the screening programme in England appears so at odds with the evidence from the major population screening trials,” he added.

He pointed to one study that showed that the gap between testing people at the 69-years-old threshold, like in England, and those at 74-years-old, as in Scotland, could result in 25 per cent of detectable cancers being missed.

The journal claims that bowel cancer screening can reduce the number of people who die from bowel cancer by 16 per cent.