NHS Screening Programmes will Adopt New Tests for Cervical and Bowel Cancer
The NHS could soon start routinely offering a test for HPV instead of a cervical smear as the initial screening test for cervical cancer, after experts ruled the change in approach would help to pick up cancers more effectively.
The National Screening Committee (NSC) has advised the screening programme in England ‘should adopt HPV as a primary screen test as it is a more accurate screening test’.
With the new programme women will only undergo cytology if they test positive for high-risk HPV, with further investigations if they have a positive cytology result. It is hoped the move will mean that overall, women will in future undergo screening less frequently over their lifetime.
The NSC also recommended the bowel cancer screening programme should introduce the newer, more accurate faecal immunohistochemical test (FIT) instead of faecal occult blood tests (FOBTs). Evidence has shown the FIT test is more accurate and increases uptake as the home testing is much simpler to carry out.
In other recommendations, the interval for screening patients with diabetes for diabetic retinopathy is to be extended from one to two years.
However, NSC experts have again ruled out a population based screening programme for prostate cancer. They said the PSA test is ‘still a poor test for prostate cancer and a more specific and sensitive test is needed’.
The changes to the bowel and cervical screening programmes have already been backed by the Government’s independent cancer taskforce, which forms the basis of NHS England’s new cancer strategy.
Sir Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK and head of the taskforce, said: ‘I would urge all the governments of the UK to commit to rolling them out as quickly as possible, as Scotland has already pledged to do with the new bowel screening test FIT.’