I read the recent letters regarding the bowel cancer screening “poo in the post” test (18 May) with an enduring sense of frustration regarding the lack of public awareness of what this test is actually meant to achieve and its implications for them.
Bowel cancer commonly gives rise to no symptoms, hence the need for a national screening programme. However, due to limited resources (colonoscopy capacity), this is set up to detect a group of asymptomatic people who would otherwise have gone undiagnosed, with the aim of benefiting us at a population level overall while acknowledging that some people with a negative test may have been falsely reassured that they do not have bowel cancer.
