Beating bowel cancer: a screening update

Around one in 20 people in the UK will develop bowel cancer during their lifetime. It is the second leading cause of cancer deaths and causes over 16,000 deaths each year in the UK. However, regular bowel cancer screening has been shown to reduce the risk of dying from bowel cancer by 16%.1

Late diagnosis remains a major reason for the UK’s poorer survival rates, when compared to other European countries. Unfortunately, only 9% of patients in the UK are diagnosed at the very earliest stage of the disease, known as Dukes’ stage A (this is where the cancer is only in the innermost lining of the colon or rectum, or slightly growing into the muscle layer). It is estimated that approximately 90% of these 9% of patients will survive the disease for five years or more. Five year survival rates are lower for patients diagnosed at later stages of the disease, with less than 10% of patients diagnosed at Dukes’ stage D surviving five years or more.2

The Department of Health established the NHS bowel cancer screening programme in 2006 to increase the number of patients diagnosed in the earlier stages of the disease. Screening is now offered across the whole of the UK, although each of the constituent countries offers a different approach.