Screening for bowel cancer has been extended to include those up to age 70 from April 1st, the Health Service Executive (HSE) has said.
BowelScreen is the national bowel screening programme which up to now has offered free bowel screening to people aged 59 to 69. It aims to detect signs of bowel cancer at an early stage, when there are no symptoms.
Under the programme, eligible people are invited to take part every two years using a simple kit test sent to your home. Using this, you take a sample of your poo and post it back to BowelScreen in a freepost envelope. The test looks for a level of blood in the sample, and the results are then sent out within four weeks.
BowelScreen manager Hilary Coffey said the programme is working to offer bowel screening to more people.
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Prof Pádraic Mac Mathuna, clinical director of BowelScreen, said about 3 per cent of people who do the test are referred for a follow-up colonoscopy.
“This is where we look for and remove precancerous changes, called polyps, from the lining of the bowel. We know that most bowel cancers develop from polyps so by doing this we can prevent cancer,” he said.
“For the small number of people who have cancer found following screening, it is usually discovered at an earlier stage, before symptoms have started, when treatment is less invasive and more likely to be successful.”
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Joe Grogan, from Tuam in Co Galway, said he was initially hesitant when he received a letter inviting him to take part in the BowelScreen programme.
“Once the little sample is in the tube, that’s it. For what those five minutes have meant to me, I’d do it every day if I had to,” he said.
“I sent the test back and thought nothing of it. Then I got a call on December 20th, 2023 to say that something had shown up in my test and they wanted me to have a follow-up test called a colonoscopy on January 9th.”
He underwent a colonoscopy, which is when a thin tube with a camera at the end is used to look for changes in the bowel. During this, a polyp was discovered. A biopsy of this diagnosed bowel cancer.
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“I was shocked. I couldn’t take it in,” Mr Grogan said. “I had no symptoms, no signs and hadn’t been at all worried over Christmas about the colonoscopy coming up.”
Mr Grogan, who was one of the first 59-year-olds to take part when the age range was previously extended, had follow-up tests and started a treatment plan including chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, followed by surgery in August 2024.
“Here I am nearly eight months after the surgery. It was a blip, I will park that part of my life and move on with the rest.”
