Men targeted in colon cancer screening

ONLY 60% of men and women are likely to participate in the national colorectal screening programme when it is launched next year.

It is the first time that men will be involved in a national screening programme and that presents a big challenge, said Tony O’Brien, director of the National Cancer Screening Service.

He was speaking at the announcement of 15 ‘candidate’ colonoscopy screening units that have yet to demonstrate they have passed all the tests to confirm their status.

From January, men and women aged 60 to 69 will be offered a free home-testing kit known as a Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) that looks for the presence of blood in a bowel movement.

The easy-to-use kit includes step-by-step instructions and can be sent by free post to a laboratory for testing.

Around 94%-95% of people who take part in the programme will receive a normal test result, with the remainder offered an internal investigation known as a colonoscopy.

The NCSS sought expressions of interests in January 2011 from all publicly funded hospitals wanting to be considered as a screening colonoscopy unit, as part of the national programme that will tackle a cancer responsible for more than 900 deaths in Ireland every year.

Thirty-one hospitals responded and the Health Service Executive, through the NCSS, commissioned baseline assessment visits in those units.

The selection process has two objectives — identifying hospitals best placed to take on an additional colonoscopy workload of 10 to 12 colonoscopies per week and ensuring that most people live no further than 80km from a centre.

He said the aim was to provide results from the FIT test within three weeks.