Cancer scheme 'outdated' - expert

The Government's decision to fund a $24 million bowel cancer screening pilot is a step in the right direction, but it is not the most effective way to deal with the country's most frequently diagnosed form of cancer, says a cancer specialist.

Dunedin School of Medicine associate professor Brian Cox said Health Minister Tony Ryall's claim that the programme, announced yesterday, would reduce the death rate from bowel cancer by 36 per cent was optimistic and not based on actual observations.

The pilot would use faecal occult blood tests (FOBT) but recent studies showed flexible sigmoidoscopy tests were a more effective way of screening because they could detect cancer and preinvasive polyps whether or not they were bleeding. Funding for bowel cancer screening would be better directed to a programme that used this method, he said.

"One-off flexible sigmoidoscopy between 55 and 64 years of age is very likely to rapidly supersede the FOBT as the screening test of choice and we should be planning accordingly."

An advisory committee to the Health Minister, Cancer Control New Zealand, were behind the times in recommending FOBT, he said.

"They're a bit out of date really, the research is starting to get ahead of them."

Cancer Control New Zealand chairman Chris Atkinson was not immediately available to respond but previously said the consequences for not proceeding with the pilot would have been immense.

"Adopting the pilot is an essential first step towards a national implementation of a full bowel cancer screening programme for New Zealand."

- NZPA