Screening
Screening is the use of medical investigations to check for cancer in people who are well. This is done when the population is at high risk of the disease and there is a good chance of finding cancer early and improving survival by offering early treatment. An example of this is breast cancer - the disease is very common, affecting up to one in nine women in the UK, the investigations used, in this case mammography, are not harmful and the disease outcome is improved if breast cancer is caught early. Screening programmes usually pick up early treatable cancer but can also pick up late disease in people who seem well.
Cervical cancer is a disease that presents late because the cervix (neck of the womb) is in an unseen position in the body and there are no symptoms of early cancer. Treatment of abnormal cells at an early stage prevents cervical cancer from developing and there is a cheap and easy screening test to do this – the cervical smear test.
Current national cancer screening programmes:
- Breast cancer – mammographic screening – UK wide for women aged 50-70.
- Cervical cancer – cervical smear test screening – UK wide for women aged 25-64.
- Bowel cancer – faecal occult blood screening – in England for people aged 60-69.
Other types of screening available or being developed:
- Prostate cancer – blood tests and ultrasound scan of the prostate gland – no formal screening programme but often carried out during private health checks.
- Ovarian cancer – ultrasound of the ovaries and measurement of blood tumour markers – current trial ongoing in the UK. Women at high risk get screening outside the trial on the NHS.
- Lung cancer – research trials still looking for a good method of doing this.
