Oct. 06 2008
Source Page: Bowel cancer screening: the facts. 7 p.Found: Bowel cancer screening: the facts. 7 p.
Mar. 14 2024
Source Page: Bowel Cancer Screening: Annual Report 2021 to 2022Found: Bowel Cancer Screening: Annual Report 2021 to 2022
Mar. 14 2024
Source Page: Bowel Cancer Screening: Annual Report 2021 to 2022Found: Bowel Cancer Screening: Annual Report 2021 to 2022
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure equality in bowel cancer outcomes.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Health Service is taking several steps to improve bowel cancer outcomes for patients across England. The NHS is working towards its Long Term Plan’s ambition of diagnosing 75% of all stageable cancers at stage one and two, by 2028. Achieving this will mean that an additional 55,000 people each year will survive their cancer for at least five years after diagnosis. With progress made on reducing waiting times, cancer is being diagnosed at an earlier stage more often, with survival rates improving across almost all types of cancer.
In 2023, NHS England’s Help Us Help You campaign urged people to take up the offer of bowel screening when invited, while gradually extending the screening offer from those aged 60 down to 50 years old, ensuring more people are diagnosed with bowel cancer at the earliest stage.
The NHS is also now offering routine preventative bowel cancer screening to thousands of people in England with a genetic condition, Lynch syndrome, that increases their chance of developing bowel cancer and certain other cancers. This gives the NHS a better chance of finding cancers at a time when they can be more easily and effectively treated.
Tackling disparities is important in improving all types of cancer outcomes. The Government is committed to its levelling up mission, to narrow the gap in healthy life expectancy by 2030 and increase healthy life expectancy by five years by 2035. Our approach will continue to focus on supporting people to live healthier lives, helping the NHS and social care provide the best treatment and care for patients, and tackling health disparities through national and system interventions such as the NHS’s Core20PLUS5 programme.
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities was set up to address health inequalities with a range of interventions, including accelerating prevention programmes, reducing digital exclusion, supporting general practice in deprived communities, and improving health literacy.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of bowel cancer diagnosis services in (a) Stockport and (b) Greater Manchester.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department continues to take steps to improve early diagnosis for all cancers, which encompasses bowel cancer, and in all areas, including Stockport and Greater Manchester. The Department is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the Delivery Plan for Tackling the COVID-19 Backlog of Elective Care, which includes plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment.
NHS England is working to meet the Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS), which sets a target of 28 days from urgent referral by a general practitioner or screening programme to patients being told that they have cancer, or that cancer is ruled out. To achieve this target, NHS England has: streamlined bowel cancer pathways by implementing faecal immunochemical testing (FIT) triage for patients in primary and secondary care settings; implemented non-symptom specific pathways for patients; and opened community diagnostic centres across England, prioritising this capacity for cancer services. The latest published data from February 2024 shows FDS performance was 78.1% nationally. More specifically to bowel cancer, the latest published data shows that at a national level, the number of people diagnosed with bowel cancer has risen to 41,596 in 2021, compared to 37,702 diagnosed in 2019. Since the FIT kit was introduced into the bowel cancer screening programme in April 2019, national uptake has increased from 59.2% to 67.8%. the latest data for the North-West region shows that 64.3% of 60 to 74-year-olds completed their bowel screening in the first quarter of 2023/24.
In 2023 the NHS England’s Help Us Help You campaign urged people to take up the offer of bowel screening when invited, and the screening offer for the bowel screening programme is being gradually extended from age 60 down to 50 years old by 2025, ensuring more people are screened and potentially diagnosed with bowel cancer at the earliest stage. NHS England is also now offering routine preventative bowel cancer screening to people with Lynch syndrome, with 94% of people on average receiving the test between 2021 and 2023, up from 47% in 2019.
Asked by: Baroness Merron (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government which groups have a lower-than-average rate of participation in home-kit bowel cancer screening; and what plans they have to increase participation.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The national IT system for the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme does not routinely collect data that could identify groups that have a lower-than-average uptake rate of the fecal immunochemical bowel cancer screening test.
Research has found that groups which are less likely to take part in bowel screening include men, people from ethnic minority backgrounds, and people in more deprived areas. Physical or mental health conditions can also make carrying out a home test more difficult.
NHS England has started work to improve its national screening IT systems through the Digital Transformation of Screening programme. This will enable screening providers to record protected characteristics, to more accurately identify groups with the lowest uptake, and target initiatives to improve uptake.
Asked by: Henry Smith (Conservative - Crawley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help improve genomics testing for bowel cancer patients.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
A National Health Service testing programme is helping to diagnose thousands of people with a genetic condition, Lynch Syndrome, that increases the chance of developing certain cancers including bowel cancer. The national programme ensures all people diagnosed with bowel cancer are offered genomic testing, with a diagnosis for Lynch Syndrome not only helping to guide more personalised cancer treatment but enabling their families and relatives to be offered testing too. Relatives who receive a diagnosis of Lynch Syndrome can be referred to genetic services to discuss regular testing options to help catch any cancers as early as possible, as well as to consider preventive options such as taking aspirin or undergoing risk-reducing surgery.
Genomic testing in the NHS in England is provided through the NHS Genomic Medicine Service (GMS) and delivered by a national genomic testing network of seven NHS Genomic Laboratory Hubs (GLHs). The NHS GLHs deliver testing as directed by the National Genomic Test Directory (NGTD) which outlines the full range of genomic testing offered by the NHS in England including tests for 3,200 rare diseases and over 200 cancer clinical indications, including both whole genome sequencing (WGS) and non-WGS testing. The NGTD sets out the eligibility criteria for patients to access testing as well as the genomic targets to be tested and the method that should be used, including testing for bowel cancer patients.
The NHS GMS cancer genomic testing strategy has facilitated a move to a consolidated laboratory network through the seven NHS GLHs delivering more extensive panel testing using cutting edge high throughput Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology. For patients, including those with bowel cancer, this technology enables testing for a larger number of genetic variations to give a more precise diagnosis, identify biomarkers to target treatment and opportunities to access innovative medicines, and can support enrolment into molecularly stratified clinical trials.
Testing is available for all eligible patients across the whole of England. Individuals should discuss with their healthcare professional (for example, their general practitioner or other healthcare professional if they are already being seen in a relevant service) whether genomic testing is appropriate for them. Their healthcare professional will then make a decision whether to refer the individual either directly or via an NHS clinical genomics service or other relevant clinical speciality for genomic testing following clinical review of their and their family’s medical history if known, and the relevant genomic testing eligibility criteria.
The 17 NHS Clinical Genomic Services (NHS CGSs), commissioned by NHS England, deliver a comprehensive clinical genomic and counselling service that directs the diagnosis, risk assessment and lifelong clinical management of patients of all ages and their families who have, or are at risk of having, a rare genetic or genomic condition. As part of the NHS CGS, the patient and their family will access diagnosis, and management relevant to their particular condition, but also receive support and guidance so that they are able to understand their condition, its implications, and their options in relation to reproduction, screening, prevention and clinical management.
Asked by: Taiwo Owatemi (Labour - Coventry North West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to ensure that people with Lynch Syndrome are (a) informed of their condition and (b) made aware of their increased risk of bowel cancer.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England, through the NHS Genomic Medicine Service, has launched a national transformation project to ensure more patients with Lynch syndrome are identified and benefit from regular check-ups, earlier interventions, and more targeted treatment, such as combinations of immunotherapy, chemotherapy and surgeries.
People aged between 25 and 75 years old identified as having Lynch Syndrome will be included in the surveillance arm of the National Health Service bowel cancer screening programme, and will be offered a colonoscopy every two years.
The national programme ensures all people diagnosed with bowel and endometrial are offered genomic testing, with a diagnosis for Lynch syndrome not only helping to guide more personalised cancer treatment but enabling their families and relatives to be offered testing too.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to support NHS England’s pilot to reduce the faecal immunochemical test threshold for the Bowel Cancer Screening Programme from 120µg/g to 80µg/g; and whether they have had discussions with NHS England regarding geographical areas for the pilot.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are committed to improving the NHS Bowel Screening programme, and welcome NHS England’s plans for pilot areas, which will reduce the faecal immunochemical test (FIT) down to 80µg/g. NHS England plans to publish an Expression of Interest to give all bowel screening services, and their partner symptomatic endoscopy providers, an opportunity to submit their interest in becoming a FIT@80 pilot site. These pilot sites are planned to be selected and launched later in 2024/25, and attention will be paid to ensure there is regional variation across the pilot sites selected.
Asked by: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her policy is on establishing a national policy for neurogenic bowel cancer; and what steps her Department is taking to ensure adequate care is available for people who need it.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has no plans at present to establish a national policy on neurogenic bowel disorder. To help ensure that patients with neurogenic bowel receive timely and appropriate care, NHS England has developed a range of guidance, including its Excellence in Continence Care guidance. NHS England has also published a service specification for spinal cord injury services, which makes specific reference to bowel care. It outlines that patients with spinal injury should be provided with advice and care by specialist nursing staff in specialist fields, including in the field of bladder and bowel management. In addition, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines on faecal incontinence set out the care that patients with neurogenic bowel should receive, including a neurological bowel management programme.
No estimate has been made of the cost to the National Health Service of a lack of specialist bowel care for patients with neurogenic bowel disorders. Nor has an estimate been made of the costs incurred by the diagnosis and treatment of pressure sores, resulting from inadequate care and other secondary complications.