UHDB leading the way to detect and prevent thousands more bowel cancers with more sensitive screening
UHDB is one of three Midlands hospital trusts at the forefront of piloting a new sensitivity of bowel cancer screening, which aims to diagnose the disease earlier, resulting in earlier prevention and saving lives.
The home-testing kit, known as the faecal immunochemical test (FIT), is offered to all people over 50 years old and checks for blood in a small stool sample, which can be a sign of bowel cancer. By reducing the level at which traces of blood in a FIT test would lead to further investigations, the NHS will offer 35% more screening colonoscopies each year to help diagnose or rule out cancer.
UHDB was the first hospital Trust in the country to offer this new programme, when it introduced the changes in January 2025. Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust followed suit and Royal Wolverhampton Hospital NHS Trust, later joined the pilot in April 2025.
Dr Stephen Hearing, Consultant Gastroenterologist at UHDB and Clinical Director of the South Derbyshire Bowel Cancer Screening Programme, said: “For a year we have lowered the threshold for home-screening kits to trigger more referrals for further testing. This has meant an increase in the number of people identified with tiny traces of blood in their poo and an increase in the number we see here at UHDB for further testing.”
The NHS estimates this change will detect around 600 additional bowel cancers early each year in England – around an 11% increase – and find 2,000 more people with high-risk polyps in their bowel, allowing patients to have preventative surgery before any cancers develop.
Peter Johnson, National Clinical Director for Cancer at NHS England, said: “This is a major step forward in bowel cancer detection. Finding bowel cancer earlier can mean less intensive treatment, a better chance of recovery, and in many cases people can avoid cancer altogether by having dangerous polyps removed before they cause harm.
“Testing at the lower threshold provides us with a better early-warning system, helping us to spot bowel cancer earlier, often picking up problems before symptoms appear, when treatment works best.
“I would strongly encourage everyone who is sent a bowel screening test to complete it and return it as soon as possible — it really could make all the difference.”
Once fully rolled out, testing at the lower threshold is expected to reduce late-stage diagnoses and deaths from bowel cancer by around six per cent, while detecting thousands more cancers earlier and preventing more cases will also save the NHS over £30 million each year in treatment costs.
For patients, the experience stays simple, and does not change. FIT tests are done at home by putting a sample in a small tube and returning it by post to the NHS for testing. The difference is that the NHS is now able to act earlier and more effectively, when it matters most.
Since the change was introduced in early adopter areas, more than 60 additional bowel cancers and nearly 500 high-risk polyps have already been found and treated, preventing illness and saving lives.