'This major step forward will help save hundreds more lives from this devastating disease'

NHS says lowering screening threshold will pick up more bowel cancer cases early

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THE NHS in England is improving the sensitivity of bowel cancer screening in a bid to pick up thousands more cases that could be prevented or caught early.

NHS England said it will lower the detection threshold for the home-screening stool kit from next month, bringing it into line with Scotland and Wales.

The move means thousands more people will be checked for signs of bowel cancer, resulting in 600 more cases being detected early each year in England - an 11 per cent increase on current levels.

Some 2,000 more people with high-risk polyps in their bowel, which are growths that can go on to become cancer, are also expected to be picked up by the change.

As a result, the NHS is expected to carry out 35 per cent more colonoscopies (about 34,000 extra) each year to help diagnose or rule out the disease.

The home-testing stool kit, known as the faecal immunochemical test (FIT), is offered to everyone aged 50 and over, and works by picking up signs of blood in a sample.

It measures micrograms of human haemoglobin per gram of faeces. The definition of a positive or negative result can be changed by altering the threshold at which further investigations - such as colonoscopy - are triggered.