A CAMPAIGN to lower the age limit of bowel cancer screening has been given regional support.
David McLenachan is backing charity Beating Bowel Cancer’s call to have the age made the same throughout the UK.
In England, men and women between the ages of 60 and 74 years take part in the screenings but the charity wants the age limit lowered to match the limit in Scotland.
Mr McLenachan said: “I do support the reduction in the bowel cancer screening age to 50. Despite reasonable exercise and diet, I was diagnosed with the cancer at 57, if I had not acted on my single symptom sign as I did, without being due for a screen for three years I would most likely have been in much greater risk of the cancer having spread during that time-frame.”
The 60-year-old, from Ainsworth, was diagnosed with bowel cancer after he visited his GP with bleeding.
Biopsies confirmed it had been caught at an early stage and hadn’t spread to the lymph nodes so he needed an operation but no chemotherapy.
Beating Bowel Cancer argues that by lowering the age limit, over 4,000 patients a year would be given the chance of being diagnosed early which offers a 97 per cent survival rate.
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