We’ve published our 2022-2023 BowelScreen Programme report. Data presented in this report relates to people invited for bowel screening during this two-year period.
BowelScreen is for people who have no symptoms of bowel cancer. To take part, eligible people are invited by letter to take a faecal immunochemical test (FIT) - a home-test kit that is returned for testing in a contracted laboratory.
Uptake rates
For this reporting period, the eligible population for BowelScreen were people aged 60 to 69. In 2022 some people who had turned 70 and were not invited due to the COVID-19 pandemic were invited. In October 2023, we lowered the age range to include everyone aged 59. The results of extending screening to people aged 59 will be included in our next programme report.
- We invited 617,512 people for screening.
- Of these 319,154 people chose screening, and 286,288 satisfactory home-test kits were completed and returned.
- Based on the invited population, the screening uptake rate is 46.4%. Our programme standard is 50%.
- The uptake rate remains high at 89.2% among people who have previously completed the home-test kit and are invited again to take part.
Screening outcomes
Most people get a normal result from the laboratory. When a person has a positive (not normal) test result, they are offered a colonoscopy in one of our endoscopy units.
Most bowel cancers develop from polyps (abnormal tissue growths that can sometimes turn into cancer). Removing them at colonoscopy meets an integral aim of our bowel screening programme – lowering a person’s risk of developing bowel cancer in the future through prevention.
- 3.1% of the satisfactory home-test kits completed had a positive test result.
- Over 11,000 people had a colonoscopy over the two years.
- We found and removed polyps in over 4,000 people.
- 849 people had advanced polyps removed.
Cancers detected
Bowel cancer can be a treatable disease if found early. BowelScreen aims to find bowel cancer as early as possible, when treatment is more likely to be successful.
- 448 people had bowel cancer detected – 285 colon cancers, 154 rectal cancers and 9 cases of cancer where the site was unconfirmed.
- This is a cancer detection rate of 1.6 per 1,000 people screened by the home-test and a 4.9% detection rate at colonoscopy.
- Nearly half (43.8%) of bowel cancers diagnosed were found at an early stage.
Increasing uptake
We’re working on initiatives to increase uptake of BowelScreen. In 2023, we completed market research among the eligible population to understand knowledge and awareness of bowel screening and bowel cancer. The findings provide insights into why some people may or may not take part in screening. This informs our communications campaigns which aim to help people to make informed choices about taking part in bowel screening.
Quality assurance
Our Standards for Quality Assurance in Colorectal Screening (second edition) set out the quality standards and requirements against which we measured the performance of our BowelScreen programme. We performed well against these standards in 2022 and 2023, achieving the majority of our targets. COVID-19 continued to have an impact on the delivery of bowel screening with infection prevention control measures in place until April 2022. This particularly impacted our capacity to deliver colonoscopies.
We worked with the National Cancer Registry Ireland to measure our rate of post colonoscopy bowel cancers (PCCRC) in BowelScreen. Our standards for quality assurance are based on international guidelines. These tell us that the PCCRC rate should be between 2.5% and 8.5%. Our PCCRC rate for BowelScreen is 4.3%. This tells us that our programme is performing well.
Publishing the report, BowelScreen Programme Manager Hilary Coffey Farrell said: “Our strong performance in finding and removing early signs of disease, and high uptake rates among previous screening participants, demonstrates the power of bowel screening to truly prevent bowel cancer. We will continue our work to address the barriers to screening and enable more people to choose screening.
“Our focus on operational excellence ensures that we deliver high-quality, efficient, and safe services. This could not be achieved without the dedication and professionalism of the people who work to ensure that all our services are delivered to high standards. We extend our thanks to our staff and our partners. We will continue to work together to save lives and improve people’s health.”