Study: Early bowel cancer screening test could halve deaths

The number of people dying from one of Ireland’s most common cancers could be cut in half as a direct result of a groundbreaking early screening test.

Experts at St Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin made the claim after revealing the preliminary findings from a new national bowel cancer project.

Under an initiative called BowelScreen, doctors at the facility asked 200 potentially at-risk patients aged 60 to 65 to follow a take-home test to check for microscopic traces of blood in their stools.