Bowel cancer screening success are more caught early

The national roll-out of bowel screening for those aged 60-69 has seen the rate of diagnosis of the cancer rise by more than 12% in England.

The rise occurred between 2006 and 2008, according to new figures from Cancer Research UK. Bowel screening has since been extended to anyone aged 60 to 74, after the national roll-out began in 2006.

Catherine Thomson, Cancer Research UK’s head of statistics, said: “These figures are evidence that the bowel cancer screening programme is helping to find cases of bowel cancer sooner.

“Without the screening programme it’s likely that many of these cancers would not have been found for another few years, by which time they would be harder to treat.

“It’s expected that when all of the national screening programmes across the UK have been up and running for a couple of years, that similar results will be seen for the whole of the UK. And hopefully the screening programme will soon reduce the number of deaths from bowel cancer.”