Bowel cancer on the rise in the young as call for screening age to be lowered

With bowel cancer on the rise in young people, new guidelines call for screening to start earlier.

Bowel cancer screening is set to start five years earlier at the age of 45 after the nation’s peak medical body approved new guidelines.

The rate of bowel cancer among young Australians is on the rise with one in nine cases now occurring in those aged under 50.

However, this age group is not currently eligible for population screening which begins at age 50.

Experts at the Cancer Council have developed new guidelines which will see the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program (NBCSP) screening age lowered to age 45.

The changes are also expected to allow for people aged 40-44 to ask their GP for a stool test every two years outside the NBCSP until the free testing program kicks in.

Currently guidelines state that GP’s can voluntarily offer the test to people aged 45-49.

Under the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program people over 50 are sent a test kit in the mail every two years which they perform at home and send back for analysis.

The government’s peak medical body the National Health and Medical Research Council confirmed to News Corp that it had now backed the changes to the screening guidelines.

This is a crucial step before the government can fund the expansion of the testing program.

A Cancer Council spokesperson said its new guidelines would be released publicly on October 23.

Bowel Cancer Australia chief executive Julien Wiggins.

Health Minister Mark Butler will now have to find an extra $33 million to fund an estimated 1.64 million extra screening tests every two years.

It costs the government $37.31 to send out each test and have it analysed but only 40 per cent of people currently return the test.

A spokesperson for Mr Butler said “the government is carefully considering the implications of the recommendation in the updated guidelines to lower the eligible age of the NBCSP from 50 to 45 years”.

Bowel Cancer Australia has been advocating for lowering the screening age for years.

“We are calling on the Federal Government to approve, fund and implement the lowering of the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program age from 50 to 45,” Bowel Cancer Australia chief Julien Wiggins said.

“Youthfulness should not be a barrier to timely diagnosis.”

Mother of three Nina Di Santo – with her husband Aaron and children Ben, 17, Luisa, 14, and Gabe 11 – was diagnosed with bowel cancer in her early forties. Picture: Supplied

Mother of three Nina Di Santo was diagnosed with bowel cancer aged 42 and it has since spread to other parts of her body.

The pediatric nurse from Adelaide needed an iron infusion in 2018 but doctors thought it was caused by her vegetarian diet and busy life.

Two years later she was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer.

She hopes lowering the age for bowel cancer screening will make GP’s realise it can be a younger person’s disease.

“I do wonder if I had been referred for a colonoscopy in 2018 … I just would have been on the recall list for colonoscopy rather than going through all of this,” she said

“We know that if the cancer is caught early, it is 99 per cent treatable.

“Obviously my prognosis is poor and the likelihood is that there won’t be cure or remission for me, it will be a matter of just continuing to have treatment and surgery.”

Originally published as Bowel cancer on the rise in the young as call for screening age to be lowered