Home cancer test cuts deaths by a quarter

A study looking at the first patients to be asked to participate in the screening programme for the disease found that bowel cancer deaths were cut by 27 per cent among those who took part compared with those who did not.

Campaigners hope the results will encourage more Scots to take up the offer of screening to reduce their risk of dying from bowel cancer.

The most recent figures suggest that uptake of the test in Scotland, where the programme has now been rolled out nationwide, is just over 50 per cent. The screening programme uses a method known as the faecal occult blood test (FOBt) – a kit which is mailed to people to carry out at home.

Adults aged 50-69 are invited to take the test, where they post a series of small stool samples to a lab to be checked for traces of hidden blood which could be an early sign of bowel cancer.

The new study, funded by the Scottish Government and presented at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) conference in Liverpool , is the first to show the real impact of using the FOBt in a population-based screening programme.

More than 370,000 people from three health boards were invited to take part in a pilot study before a national programme was introduced.

The screening group were compared to a control group of the same size who were not taking part in the study but had similar bowel cancer death rates.

The results showed that among those invited for screening, there was a 10 per cent reduction in bowel cancer deaths compared with those not invited. But when researchers looked just at those who completed the cancer test, the reduction in deaths rose to 27 per cent.

Experts point out that when bowel cancer is found in its earliest stages, there is a good chance of survival, with more than 90 per cent of people surviving the disease at least five years.

But if the tumour has spread to other parts of the body when it is diagnosed, just over 6 per cent survive this long.

Researcher Professor Robert Steele, based at the Bowel Screening Research Centre in Dundee, said: “For the first time, we can see the effects of a FOBt-based colorectal cancer screening programme in the real world of the NHS.”

Hazel Nunn, head of health information at Cancer Research UK, said: “Without the screening programme it’s likely that many of these cancers and growths would not have been found for another few years, by which time they would be harder to treat.

“So it’s really important to take up the opportunity to use the free bowel screening kit.”

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “The bowel screening programme is starting to have a real impact on bowel cancer survival and it is therefore crucial that those invited are given the information they require.”