Bowel-cancer screening pilot to begin in England

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is to announce pilots of a bowel-cancer screening programme that could save 3,000 lives a year.

From March, Norwich, South of Tyne, St Mark's London, Surrey, West Kent and Wolverhampton NHS trusts will offer screening to everyone aged over 55.

The screening involves a thin, bendy tube with a camera attached being placed into the rectum and lower bowel.

Currently, those aged 60-69 in England are offered faecal occult blood tests.

If any blood is found in the faeces, the person will be invited for further tests - usually a colonoscopy, where a thin, flexible tube with a camera is guided along the entire length of the large bowel.

The new screening will invite younger, symptomless patients to have a similar camera check, a flexible sigmoidoscopy, of the lower part of their large bowel to look for any abnormal growths.

Screening in this way allows doctors to remove growths that might otherwise turn in to cancer and treat any cancers already present.

Read more - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20668175