Remember Early Bowel Cancer Diagnosis Saves Lives.
Book Your Screening Today.
At the London General Practice we help you stay healthy, as well as treat you when you are ill. During this period of national lockdown it’s as important as ever that you maintain your annual health screenings.
We can identify any early signs of disease or other health issues and discuss potential risk factors in your family history or lifestyle that may be putting your health at risk. Early detection prevents long term illness.
To book your bowel cancer screening appointment please call now on:
+44 207 935 1000.
Or email us at: info@thelondongeneralpractice.com
Bowel Cancer Screening
Dr Angela Rai, The London General Practice
Bowel cancer is a cancer of the large bowel or rectum, it is also known as colorectal cancer. Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK and is the second most common cause of cancer death in the UK.
If detected early before symptoms develop, bowel cancer treatment is more likely to be successful.
Bowel Cancer:
Symptoms, Risk and Treatment
Symptoms include:
- Bleeding from the back passage and/or blood in your stool
- A persistent and unexplained change in bowel habit
- Unexplained weight loss+ Extreme tiredness
- A pain or lump in your abdomen.
Most people with these symptoms actually do not have bowel cancer, but if you are concerned, please speak to your GP.
Risk factors include:
- Age over 50+
- A strong family history of bowel cancer
- Longstanding inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis
- Lifestyle factors:
- Eating too much red and processed meat
- Eating too little fibre.
- Eating lots of fibre from wholegrains, pulses, vegetables and fruit helps to reduce your risks of bowel cancer
- Obesity is a cause of bowel cancer
- Alcohol consumption
- Smoking
Screening
Screening is a way of testing healthy people to see if they show early signs of cancer, when there is a good chance of successful treatment. Screening can also find non-cancerous growths (polyps) in the bowel that may develop into cancer in the future. Removing these polyps can reduce your risk of getting bowel cancer.
At the London General Practice we are able to guide our patients to access a number of screening techniques designed to detect bowel cancers early.
- Faecal immunochemical test (FIT)or Faecal occult blood test (FOBT). These tests looks for tiny traces of blood in a stool sample.
- Ct Colonography or virtual colonoscopy. This is when your bowel is imaged using a CT scanner after a contrast agent is placed in the bowel.
- Colonoscopy: This test involves an endoscopist using a flexible tube called a colonoscope with a light and a camera at one end to examine the bowel and take samples where needed.
Bowel Cancer Treatment
Bowel cancer when detected early can be treated more successfully and may be curable.
The treatment schedule would depend on each individual case, but may comprise surgery with chemotherapy or radiotherapy. A cure may be unlikely in advance cases but symptoms can be controlled and the spread of cancer can be slowed by using a combination of treatments.
To Book your Screening
Please call now on:
+44 207 935 1000
Or email us at:
info@thelondongeneralpractice.com