City cancer success

Ten lives have already been saved by a pioneering new bowel cancer screening programme in Wolverhampton.

The cancers have been picked up since the national screening programme was piloted in the city in July.

Dr Andrew Veitch, consultant gastroenterologist at New Cross Hospital, said the home screening kit was already proving its worth.

But not as many people as expected are using the new kits in the pilot project covering 60 to 69-year-olds. The uptake is only 45 per cent compared with the expected 60 per cent.

Bowel cancer is the second biggest cancer killer but is relatively easy to screen for with the home-testing scheme.

"Wolverhampton is leading the way nationally," said Dr Veitch. "We picked up 10 cases and seven out of 10 were at the very earliest stage with a 90 per cent chance of cure or survival for five years. These are the sort of people we want to be finding."

David Loughton, chief executive of the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust, said the major challenge was to raise uptake rates to ensure more people were screened. He added: "We need to get the message out there."

Last summer Wolverhampton was chosen as a national testbed for a cancer screening programme. The scheme was extended to 850,000 people in Dudley, Walsall and South Staffordshire in the autumn.

Dr Veitch said when the programme is rolled out nationally, more than 1,200 lives a year would be saved. Everyone between the ages of 60 and 69 is invited to take part and will be sent a test kit.

That is returned to a lab in Rugby with the results sent back to doctors in Wolverhampton so anyone with signs of cancer can get treated immediately.

The testing will go out to the rest of country over the next three years, when it is expected to cut the death toll for the UK's second biggest cancer killer by a fifth.

The symptoms of colon cancer may not be apparent early on. However the early signs to watch out for include any change in bowel habit such as constipation or diarrhoea and passing blood.

By Health Correspondent Stuart Pollitt