All Checked Up
March 30, 2026
Bowel cancer starts in the large bowel (large intestine) or the rectum and is one of the most common types of cancer. It is also known as colorectal cancer. It can affect anyone at any age, although certain risk factors can increase your risk of bowel cancer.
There are often no symptoms with bowel cancer but symptoms may include bloating, unexplained weight loss, changes in your poo, such as it being softer poo or having unexplained diarrhoea or constipation; or going more often than normal, to having blood in your poo or bleeding from the bottom. Symptoms can often be similar to other conditions such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) or Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IDB)
Screening helps spot bowel cancer early making it more treatable.
One of the most effective screening tests for bowel cancer is the quantitative faecal immunochemical test or qFIT for short. It’s easy and simple to perform making the screening process as non-invasive as possible.
You take a small stool (or poo) sample and send it off to a lab that detects any presence of hidden blood which may be a sign of Bowel Cancer.
The qFIT operates on the principle that when there is blood present in the lower gastrointestinal tract, it can gradually degrade, releasing haemoglobin (blood) into the stool. The test is not only highly sensitive to human blood but also to blood present in the lower gastrointestinal tract (the bowel area) and hence it’s really good at detecting Bowel Cancer.
Although the qFIT cannot diagnose bowel cancer, it generally has a very high success rate of detecting Bowel Cancer at 84.1% making it the only NICE-recommended screening test for Bowel Cancer in the UK.
Traditionally screening has used one FIT test usually performed every 1 to 2 years. However, new research from the University of Edinburgh has found that having two FIT tests spaced around 2 weeks apart can increase detection of Bowel Cancer by a further 12.5%.
The study looked at nearly 6,000 NHS patients who had an urgent referral to Edinburgh’s Colorectal Surgery Unit. Patients were split into two groups: one tested once and the other tested twice.
The results found that doing one bowel cancer screening FIT test detected 84% of cases correctly, whereas testing twice around 13 days between each test, increased this detection rate to 96.6%.
The study also showed that doing a second bowel cancer screening FIT resulted in a 50% reduction in bowel cancers missed by the first FIT test and 17% of those who completed two tests had sufficient variation in their results, irrespective of any change in bowel symptoms.
The only test recommended by NICE for first-line screening for Bowel or Colorectal Cancer
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