Since a screening programme for bowel cancer was rolled out across England, rates among the target group of over 60s have gone up, showing that screening is helping to detect the UK’s third most common cancer earlier.
According to figures released on Wednesday by Cancer Research UK, bowel cancer rates among people aged 60 to 69 went up by more than 12 per cent in England between 2006, when the new screening programme started rolling out, and 2008.
Catherine Thomson, head of statistics at Cancer Research UK, told the press that:
“These figures are evidence that the bowel cancer screening programme is helping to find cases of bowel cancer sooner.”
Before the new programme, rates of bowel cancer among 60 to 69-year-olds in the UK were fairly stable, going up by no more than 2.1% in any two-year period in the previous 10 years.
The rates in England started going up higher than this in 2007, when it shot up by 6% compared to 2006.
The new figures are based on age-standardized incidence rates. For England these went up from 143 per 100,000 cases in 2006 to 163 per 100,000 in 2008.
The number of cases among the 60 to 69 age group in England went up from around 7,100 to 8,500 between 2006 and 2008.
These counts include patients with malignant bowel cancer, including those with cancerous polyps, and exclude those with benign or non-cancerous polyps.
The figures show little change in the diagnosis rates for other age groups between 2006 and 2008, and before this period.
The new screening programme is based on people collecting their own stool samples at home and mailing them in a special package to a lab that tests for traces of hidden blood (faecal occult blood, FOB) , which can be an early sign of colorectal cancer.
The sample collection kit is sent by post. You smear three samples of stool onto a piece of treated card and send it back in a hygienically sealed prepaid envelope.
The results are mailed back to you.
Cancer Research UK says only two out of every 100 people tested are likely to receive a positive FOB result, and should you receive one, it does not mean you have cancer, but you should have further tests. This is usually a colonoscopy to look inside your bowel and find out the cause of the bleeding.
Screening is now offered to men and women between the age of 60 and 74 in England.
If detected in its early stages, survival rates for bowel cancer are good: more than 90% of people live more than five years after diagnosis. However, this drops to a dismal 5%, that is 1 in 20 people, if detected in the advanced stage.
Thomson said the test can help detect bowel cancer earlier, before the symptoms are noticeable:
“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,” she added.
The hope is that similar dramatic results will be reflected across the UK in a couple of years, because by then programmes will have been up and running nationwide. And soon afterwards, the number of deaths should come down.
Director of health information at Cancer Research UK, Sara Hiom, said survival rates for bowel cancer have doubled in the last 40 years, with the charity’s work being “at the heart of the progress” that has been made.
“It’s really important to take up the current opportunity to use the free bowel screening test when it comes through your door because it can help pick up early signs of bowel cancer,” said Hiom.
“Also if you notice changes to your bowel habits like looser or more frequent bowel movements that last more than four weeks or blood in your stools don’t delay in seeing a doctor,” she urged.
Screening is an important tool to beating bowel cancer, and Hiom said even more lives will be saved when flexi-scope screening, which the charity has helped to develop, becomes part of the national programme, which a recent government announcement says will be quite soon.
The flexi-scope test is a flexible sigmoidoscopy, where an endoscopist inserts a thin flexible tube into the patient’s rectum and lower bowel. The tube has a small camera and light at one end allowing examination of the interior wall of the bowel and removal of any small polyps or growths before they have a chance to become cancerous.
Recent trial results suggest adding flexi-scope screening to the national programme could cut the number of bowel cancer cases by one third and deaths by 43%, among those attending screening, which equals thousands of lives every year.
Currently about 40,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year.
Although the biggest risk factor is age, and family history can also play a role, people can reduce their risk of developing bowel cancer by not becoming overweight, exercising, sticking to a healthy diet low in red and processed meat and high in fibre, not smoking and keeping alcohol consumption low.
— more info: Bowel (colorectal) cancer – UK incidence statistics
Source: Cancer Research UK (23 Mar 2011).
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD