Why routine cancer tests have age limits

‘Screening – testing because of risk, not symptoms – stops when the chance of helping you drops below the chance of harming you.’ Photograph: Marina Krasnokutska/Alamy

Jane Ghosh asks why the NHS’s routine screening for bowel and breast cancer has upper age limits (Letters, 28 April). Screening – testing because of risk, not symptoms – stops when the chance of helping you drops below the chance of harming you. Diagnostic testing is done at any age.
Dr John Doherty
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

• Re Jane Ghosh’s letter about the NHS stopping routine bowel and breast cancer testing after the early 70s, it’s important to know that people over the age thresholds can request a bowel cancer test every two years or breast cancer screening every three years. Remembering to do so is a different story.
David Duell
Durham