NHS bowel cancer tests are missing a third of tumours

SORRY, says the doctor, it’s bowel cancer. The verdict on that nagging, uncomfortable pain in your stomach, which you had put down to stress, is scary. And it’s confusing – because just months earlier, a routine test gave you the all-clear. How could this have happened?

That test you had was bowel scope screening, introduced in England and Wales in 2013 for over-55s and said to cut the risk of developing the disease – which kills one Briton every 30 minutes – by a third.

But according to figures in the medical journal The Lancet, it fails to detect about a third of abnormal growths and potentially fatal tumours. In fact, the one-off examination leaves two-thirds of the bowel unexamined – something patients are seldom told.

Now leading bowel cancer experts have warned the test is lulling many into a false sense of security and means potentially hazardous symptoms are ignored.

‘A negative result on a bowelcancer screening doesn’t exclude the fact that you’ve got bowel cancer,’ says Andrew Beggs, a consultant colorectal surgeon and Cancer Research UK clinical scientist. ‘It just makes it less likely.’

Fiona Osgun, health information manager at Cancer Research UK, says: ‘Bowel-cancer screening saves lives. But it’s only looking at certain portions of the bowel, so if you happen to have polyps or bowel cancer growing further up your colon, then it won’t detect that.

‘The golden rule is that if you notice something that is unusual for you, even after screening, go and see a doctor.’

THE CANCERS DEVELOP IN UNSCREENED PARTS

MORE than 40,000 Britons – including 4,000 Scots – are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year, and it is the second-biggest cancer killer.

But as the symptoms – such as bloating and diarrhoea – are often written off as irritable bowel syndrome, many people are only diagnosed late, and when the tumour has grown larger.

Once the cancer spreads to several parts of the body, there’s just a seven per cent chance of living longer than five years.

In Scotland, men and women are offered a faecal immunochemical home test kit, or FIT, which examines the entire bowel, from age 50.

Bowel scope screening can be offered in cases where the initial test highlights a heightened risk of bowel cancer.

South of the Border, routine biennial screenings for NHS patients above age 60 were rolled out.

They comprised an at-home stool-sample kit – doctors checked for microscopic traces of blood that indicate cancers in any part of the bowel. In 2013, a new test was introduced for patients between the ages of 55 and 60 to detect the disease earlier. The move was welcomed by experts, given that between 2004 and 2016, rates of bowel cancer in those 40 to 49 increased by almost two per cent.

The one-off test – known as a bowel scope – involves a thin tube with a tiny camera being inserted into the back passage.

It checks for small growths, called polyps which, if not removed, could lead to cancer, but also looks for ready-formed tumours. A bowel cancer is spotted in about one in 300 people who are screened.

About half of all GP surgeries south of the Border invite patients for the test, which takes place during a ten-minute appointment.

Some research suggests it cuts the risk of dying from bowel cancer by 40 per cent. But the bowel scope checks only the lower third of your bowel – the rectum and the left side of the colon. Statistically, this is where most polyps are found.

But in the depths of the bowel, pre-cancerous growths and even tumours could go undetected.

According to the Office for National Statistics, a third of bowel cancers diagnosed in 55 to 59-yearolds develop in these unscreened parts. Yet only the over-60s benefit from the far superior FIT test that is offered in Scotland. Last year, the UK Government announced plans to lower the eligble age for FIT tests south of the Border to the over-50s.

The pledge came after research showed the risk of bowel cancer rises steeply above the age of 50.

NHS chiefs said they were working to implement this ‘significant change’, which would require ‘many extra staff’ to be trained.