Bowel Screening

Detecting Cancer Early - Bowel Screening Programme

The Bute Practice encourages all patients who receive a kit to participate in this important screening.

About the screening programme

The Scottish Bowel Cancer Screening Programme will invite all men and women between the ages of 50 and 74 years who are registered with a GP.

It is therefore vital that you inform Rothesay Health Centre reception staff of your latest address so the co-ordinators can send you regular invitations for screening.

Other eligible individuals who are not registered with a General practice such as prisoners, armed forces, homeless and individuals in long-stay institutions will also be able to participate.

How will the screening programme be run?

All men and women aged between 50 and 74 will receive a Faecal Occult Blood test (FOBt) kit by post to their home address. The kit is completed at home and returned to the national Bowel Screening Centre for Scotland, which is based in Dundee at King’s Cross Hospital.

The centre tests all the completed screening kits and then notifies:

all participants of their results
all GP practices of positive FOBt results
all NHS Boards of positive results requiring further investigations.

Over 75

From April 2013, if you’re 75 or over you can still take a bowel screening test every two years if you want to. The co-ordinators won’t automatically send you a test kit every two years though, so you’ll need to ask for one.

It’s still free – just call the Bowel Screening Centre Helpline on 0800 0121 833 (textphone 180010800 0121 833).

Additional Information

Bowel Screening Leaflet (PDF, 5.53MB)

Additional Websites

www.bowelscreening.scot.nhs.uk

www.nhsinform.co.uk/screening/bowel

Other languages

Publication name: The bowel screening test 2015

Date: 09 September 2015

Description: These booklets explain more about the Bowel Screening Programme and why it’s important to take part as well as containing step-by-step instructions for completing a bowel screening test at home.

View options: Download files

DCE Extra Flyer (PDF, 185KB)

English language version: Bowel Screening Step by step Bengali Aug 15 [EXTERNAL PDF LINK]

Bengali language version: Bowel Screening Step by step Chinese Aug 15 [EXTERNAL PDF LINK]

Chinese language version: Bowel Screening Step by step Hindi Aug 15 [EXTERNAL PDF LINK]

Hindi language version: Bowel Screening Step by step Lithuanian Aug 15 [EXTERNAL PDF LINK]

Lithuanian language version: Bowel Screening Step by step Polish Aug 15 [EXTERNAL PDF LINK]

Polish language version: Bowel Screening Step By Step Repeat Chinese Aug 14 [EXTERNAL PDF LINK]

Chinese language version: Bowel Screening Step By Step Repeat Easy Read Mar 13 [EXTERNAL PDF LINK]

Easy Read language version: Bowel Screening Step By Step Repeat Polish Aug 14 [EXTERNAL PDF LINK]

Polish language version: Bowel Screening Step By Step Repeat Urdu Aug 14 [EXTERNAL PDF LINK]

Urdu language version: Step by step (PDF, 383KB)