Chapter 1: What is the bowel screening process and why is it important?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance.
Now, April is Bowel Cancer Awareness Month. So today I'm joined by consultant gastroenterologist at St. Vincent's University Hospital and clinical professor at the UCD School of Medicine, Professor Glenn Daugherty, to discuss the bowel screening process and services. Glenn, you're very welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here. This is a subject that people don't really like to think about. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, I think that's fair comment. People don't like talking about it and a lot of people don't even like thinking about it.
Which is why there's a barrier really to screening and to people thinking about what they need to do and whether they have a problem.
Yeah, exactly. I think people don't like talking about the sort of symptoms that might indicate bowel cancer. And then they don't like the idea of doing a stool sample, say, for example, as part of the screening programme or as part of their... assessment by the hospital.
And then they don't like the idea of having a colonoscopy, which is the test which is usually ultimately required to make the diagnosis.
Will you explain to me how the screening works and who it's for?
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Chapter 2: Who is eligible for the BowelScreen program and how does it work?
Is it conscious sedation? Is that what you do?
Yeah. So we give a combination of two medications so that patients are still able to breathe for themselves. They're still able to talk to us during the procedure. And in fact, sometimes we'll, in order to do a more thorough examination, we'll actually get patients to move around, like turn on their side, turn on their belly during the course of the procedure.
And that's much easier if the sedation is at a level where they can still move themselves. But the key thing about still being able to talk to the staff in the room is that if they feel any discomfort, if they're worried at any stage, we can talk to them all the way through the procedure, reassure them and address any problems they have.
And so as a result of that colonoscopy, you can see exactly what's going on. Yeah.
If the preparation is good, if there are polyps there, we can usually treat those on the day. We can remove those at the time. And that is basically preventing those from turning into cancer in the future.
And obviously, if, as is in a small proportion of people, we identify a cancer itself, we take samples of that and we initiate then the process to get those patients referred into the system for surgery and for imaging and for, you know, to meet an oncologist if that's needed.
So if somebody has cancer of the bowel, what does the treatment look like? Is it a uniform treatment or will it depend on what you find during the colonoscopy?
It depends on what's found during the colonoscopy and also then scans that are performed afterwards. So it depends on what we call the stage of the condition. If we can identify it at an early stage, and that's what screening is all about, then sometimes surgery by itself is enough to treat the problem.
If the disease has, let's say, progressed outside the colon itself, then that can sometimes require additional treatments, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, after the surgical procedure begins. But the results of treatment are always better if we identify it early.
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