Bowel Cancer Screening

For the past 16 years, Professor Wendy Atkin from Imperial College London has been coordinating a trial of a test called Flexi-Scope. Doctors can use a Flexi-Scope for early signs of the cancers’s development. Early detection is important for bowel cancer, and over 9 in 10 people will endure their disease for more than five years if it is diagnosed at the earliest stage. Most bowel cancers develop from symptomless growths called adenomas. If doctors can find these early, they can remove them before they have a chance to improve into cancer. This is a painless procedure and is usually quick, adding on a matter of minutes to the time needed to do the test itself.

Bowel Cancer

The UK already has a bowel screening programme. It uses a different test called the faecal occult blood test, which looks for hidden traces of blood in stools. In England and Wales, people are invited for screening between the ages of 60 and 69. They are sent a kit to use in the privacy of their own homes, and results are sent to a lab for testing. In an earlier study of 4,400 people who went through Flexi-Scope screening, Prof Atkin showed that virtually all of them were glad they had the test and were satisfied with the procedure. Meanwhile, 91 per cent reported mild or no pain, and 97 per cent said they felt little or no embarrassment.

The risks of the test appear to be small. Removing a polyp can cause a small amount of bleeding and there is around a 1 in 50,000 chance that the tube can tear the bowel. There isn’t really a risk of a false-positive, because doctors can only detect and remove polyps if they are there.

The Flexi-Scope test could be very cost-effective, especially since it only needs to be done once in an 11 year span. The test’s costs would probably be outweighed by the fact that fewer people need to be treated, and treatments are cheaper for early-stage cancers.

Signs of bowel cancer

* bleeding from the back passage without a reason

* a persistent change in your bowel habit towards looser or more frequent bowel motions

* bloating, swelling, pain or an unexplained lump in the tummy

* tiredness or looking pale

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