THE INITIAL results of a screening programme carried out at Tallaght hospital in Dublin indicate a high incidence of bowel cancer among the population and reinforces the case for the introduction of a national bowel cancer screening programme.
In the first phase of a pilot study, bowel cancer was detected in 11 per cent of people aged 50 to 74 years who were screened and significant early cancer polyps were found in a further 33 per cent of patients.
Some 5,000 screening tests were offered and 2,100 people took them up.
The findings were presented to the Oireachtas health committee yesterday by Prof Colm Ó Morain, consultant gastroenterologist at Tallaght hospital. “Our findings make a very strong case for a national bowel cancer screening programme,” he said.
John McCormack, chief executive of the Irish Cancer Society, told the committee he understood the cost of rolling out a national bowel cancer screening programme would be about €15 million per year. “This compares with €42 million for cervical screening and €24 million for the breast screening programme,” he said.
However, he said more than 900 people die from bowel cancer each year compared to 674 from breast cancer and about 80 from cervical cancer. “A national bowel cancer screening programme is the best way, indeed the only way, to tackle the major problem of preventable deaths from bowel cancer,” he added.
Bowel cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in Ireland, after lung cancer, with some 1,900 new cases every year. More than 50 per cent of cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage.
But most bowel cancer cases detected during the Tallaght hospital screening programme were at an early stage, where survival rates are very good, and treatment options relatively straightforward. If a national screening programme picked up most cases early, as in this study, the death toll from the disease here would go down.
A report by an expert group led by Prof Niall O’Higgins and presented to Minister for Health Mary Harney some months ago, recommended a national screening programme be established by January 2011.
One of the reasons many Irish people with bowel cancer are not diagnosed until their disease is at a late stage is because patients can wait months for colonoscopies. Latest figures show 820 patients are waiting more than three months for these crucial tests and more than 100 are waiting longer than a year.
Meanwhile, it has emerged the moratorium on public sector recruitment has delayed the appointment of radiographers needed to extend BreastCheck to all women in the northwest.