Dr Anisha discusses Bowel Cancer symptoms
Without a cure in sight, the greatest weapon in the fight against bowel cancer is early detection.
According to Cancer Research UK, more than nine in 10 people with bowel cancer survive the disease for five years or more, if diagnosed at the earliest stage.
This statistic makes symptom awareness front and centre.
While you might be reluctant to check the toilet bowl after you just went for a number two, Dr Anisha Patel shared there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.
Speaking on ITV’s show Lorraine, she said: “We should not be embarrassed about checking our poo. I had bowel cancer at 39 – it doesn’t discriminate.”
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Fortunately, the doctor has shared an easy-to-remember acronym for detecting bowel cancer symptoms.
Dr Patel instructed people to think of the word BOWEL when looking for signs:
- B – blood in your poo or on the toilet roll
- O – obvious change in bowel habits for more than three weeks (constipation, diarrhoea, frequency, urgency, change in your poo shape)
- W – weight loss that’s unexplained
- E – extreme tiredness
- L – lump in the tummy or tummy pain.
Bowel Cancer UK recommends seeing your GP within three weeks of noticing any change in your bowels.
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The doctor will ask about your symptoms, general health, medical history, and decide the next steps.
A new draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) is currently calling for patients with red flag signs to be offered faecal immunochemical tests (Fit).
These at-home tests could spare tens of thousands of people in England and Wales from having to undergo invasive procedures to rule out bowel cancer.
Furthermore, it could help cut NHS waiting times by reducing the need to refer people for a colonoscopy.
Dr Patel said: “These poo tests are excellent at detecting microscopic blood in your poo.
“It’s a simple poo test. You have a little stick; you get a trace of poo on it. You send it off to a lab and it goes.
“You get the results back in a week and it will tell you whether there’s a little bit of blood in your poo.
“Please don’t worry. Not every positive poo test that comes back for blood is cancer, but you then need to go and have a colonoscopy.”
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