Does the NHS provide bowel cancer screening?

The NHS offers a highly effective colon cancer population screening programme. Currently, (with regional variation), a stool kit is sent to all individuals registered with a GP every 2 years, from the age of 56 years. If blood is detected in the stool (around 2 in 100 people), further investigation is offered.

Despite finding a high number of large polyps or early cancers in those patients who have further investigation, the stool test is not sensitive at identifying small polyps and will also not identify some people with larger polyps or cancers. Although this programme is of huge benefit to the population, a normal stool result does not definitively mean that any individual’s colon is normal, so there is still some risk of cancer, or a polyp that may develop into cancer in the future.