Thousands of cases of bowel cancer will be diagnosed earlier or even prevented in England, as part of major NHS plans to increase the sensitivity of bowel cancer screening to save more lives.
NHS England today announced it is to lower the threshold for a home-screening kit to trigger urgent cancer testing from next month, with the NHS checking thousands more people identified with even smaller traces of blood in their poo.
The NHS estimates the change could help detect around 600 more bowel cancers early each year in England – around an 11% increase – and find 2,000 more people with high-risk polyps in their bowel, allowing patients to have preventative surgery before any cancers develop.
The home-testing kit, known as the faecal immunochemical test (FIT), is offered to all people over 50…