Bowel cancer screening.

Got mine about a year ago when I hit 60, sent it off, letter came back pretty quickly, all clear.

The kit comes every two years from the age of 60.  Just for those who got one last year and haven't this year

crystalhunt    01 Oct 17 13:11 
Been doing it for ten years. Silly not to. Has definitely saved lives.



Me too. Agreed

I just couldn't do it. Weak stomach and all that. Had the camera down top and bottom again and at the moment ok.

@ Facts: "no decrease in overall mortality" means that studies have failed to detect any difference in overall length of life between people screened for cancer and the rest of the population. Each group lives to the same average age.

I don't need any encouragement not to go to the Doctor.  If it ain't broke. Several times over the years I've thought I should go and get something checked out but not done, so far so good.  The one time many years ago I did I ended up in hospital with tubes being shoved down me throat, all for a false alarm.

I'll take my chances.

Great post Ronnie , good luck to you mate. I think they are offering the test to 55yr olds in some areas. Many people under 60 are dying or living with a Stoma because the cancer is diagnosed too late.

Also have a blood test each year to obtain PSA count ( Prostate)

Very eloquent post, Screaming, you said it all. I got one of these packs thru the post a few years ago, couldn't believe what I they were asking me to do tbh. Put it straight down the chute. Spoke to some friends about it and turns out that they had both complied and thought me a fool. Your post tells me I did the right thing. Thank you

As trilby22 says, if you have a problem, get it checked out as soon as possible. If you have close relatives who suffered cancer, or if you're overweight, boozing, smoking or sitting on your backside all day, screen yourself for it.

But if you're feeling well, walk the dog twice a day and eat plenty of fruit and veg, you're actually more likely to be harmed than saved by bowel cancer screening, owing to unnecessary surgery caused by most positives being false ones. Most tumours are benign, but there's no way of telling which. Not to mention the misery and anxiety that come with becoming a "patient".

From that British Medical Journal article I linked to earlier:


The NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme
was implemented on the basis of four large
randomised trials.
Meta-analysis showed a
reduction in disease specific mortality of 15%
in the screening group compared with controls
(odds ratio 0.85, 95% confidence interval 0.78
to 0.92).
The odds ratio for all cause mortality,
however, was 1.0 (0.99 to 1.02). Thus, in more
than 300000 people included in the four
trials, there was no difference in survival;
nor was there anything to indicate that a larger
trial would be worthwhile.
Given that the absolute reduction in disease
specific mortality was only 0.1% over 10
years, it would require an enormous trial
to detect a difference in all cause mortality
between the screening group and controls.
But is this really necessary? Taking the above
criticisms of disease specific mortality into
account and considering the robust nature of
all cause mortality in this example, surely we
should accept that screening for colorectal
cancer has no effect on overall survival?

Not the one in question here. I'm only(!) 56.

But living in Taunton I got a letter last year demanding that I travel to Bridgwater for a rectal endoscopy to screen for bowel cancer. Everyone over 55 gets sent this letter down here, and there's a lot of indignation in the screening community that half of us don't reply.

It involves taking an enema to purge your bowels, then somehow making your way to Bridgwater hospital with your arse purging away. In my case that would be a three-mile bike ride, a train journey and a mile-and-a-half walk at the other end.

Once there, you hang around in a surgical gown until being invited to kneel down and accept an 18-inch long flexible camera and knife to be shoved up your arse, without anaesthetic.

If polyps are found, they're cut out during the process. Even the accompanying leaflet admits that the vast majority of polyps are totally harmless. Of those that in the future might become tumours only 1 in 15 are malignant, and only 1 in 20 of those are fatal.

There is, the leaflet also admits, no actual benefit from this unless any polyps are followed up later with a full-on colonoscopy, which has definite and quantifiable dangers from bowel perforation.

Cases of bowel perforation from the initial screening with the endoscope are, the leaflet reassures you, only very rare, but do require staying in hospital for an operation.

The leaflet goes on to reassure you brightly that 4 out of 5 patients don't find the procedure painful, and only 3 in a 100 find it extremely painful.

I read that as 20% of patients find it painful or extremely painful.

I quite honestly could see nothing but downsides in this for me, from start to finish. If I'm going put myself out to prevent bowel cancer, I'd rather do so by carrying on walking and cycling everywhere, eating my greens and avoiding ciggies and booze.

But if I didn't, I suppose I'd choose to have a camera stuck up my arse instead.

For all the good it'll do you you may as well stick it up your arse.

Being surrounded by good people is also helpful because WITH FRIENDS LIKE THAT, YOU DON'T NEED ENEMAS!

This is the preventive ' screening ' I undertake every two years.

I would not undertake the procedure that sfb indicates !

Sent mine back last month,got news of all results nomral last week,gd luck GOT.

Cheers tt.

re sfb 1436 today: Whatever the worth of this programme, I underwent the procedure a few months back. They assuredly did not stick a knife up my arse.

I have the camera thing every 2 or 3 years. 5 times so far, family history of Bowel cancer, I recommend no anaesthetic, most people still do have some btw, but it doesn't really hurt much and the recovery means finish, go home!
They found polyps last time, so now I have to have it even more often. As was mentioned the purging (hours and hours of emptying and starvation) is the worst bit.

Another downside is the amount of run-up they seem to take with the tube.

I had a camera up the jacksy a couple of years ago. Had to go to Chichester as my local hospital Worthing had a lot of illness. First I had to wait as the person performing the procedure was running late as they were coming from.............Worthing when I was done my partner drove me back home. All the time all I wanted to do was f@rt but was afraid to in case I gambled and lost especially in her new car ! It's the first time in my life I've had trapped wind..........painful or what