Bowel screening programme

Why early detection is so important

Scientist Four in five people with bowel cancer detected at an early stage successfully recover from their disease. But if the tumour is very advanced when it's diagnosed, fewer than one in twenty people recover from it.

Most bowel cancers start off as harmless growths called adenomas. Doctors can find these adenomas through bowel screening, and remove them before they become full-blown cancers.

The bowel screening programme will be offered to both men and women in specific age ranges in more than 90 centres across the UK by 2009:

In England, people aged 60–69 will be screened every two years.
In Scotland, people aged 50–74 will be screened every two years.
In Wales and Northern Ireland, the age range for screening is still to be confirmed.

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