Health: Endoscopy and Bowel Cancer

Lord Winston Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I thank the noble Baroness for raising that question and am sorry to hear about her mother. As she will know, bowel cancer is unfortunately the third-most prevalent cancer and the second-biggest killer, and we need to go a long way to improve treatment. I have already mentioned the increase in the number of endoscopists, and that will help. There are also plans to make sure that existing staff within the cancer workforce have the necessary specialist skills. The size of the cancer workforce has increased over the last few years but there is a goal to dramatically increase it further. We know that the test that the noble Baroness mentioned is much more effective and can be administered much more easily. The rollout will take place from December this year.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, there is an increasing interest in capsule endoscopy, which of course is less invasive as it does not require an instrument to be put down into the abdomen. However, it requires training, which the medical literature clearly shows is insufficient. Can the Minister indicate whether the NHS is planning to provide more training for the provision of capsule endoscopies? Also, what is the risk of a large number of false positive results with all these endoscopies?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I will have to write to the noble Lord with an answer to his question about the type of endoscopy he mentions, as I do not have the details of it. The risk of false positives is one reason that we have to be extremely careful with screening programmes of all kinds, whether it is the faecal immunochemical test or an endoscopy. As he knows, whatever screening programmes are implemented, the National Screening Committee tries to reduce the number of false positives wherever possible.