This is right up your alley, so to speak Gen

Beat cancer: brush before you flush
By Adam Cresswell
January 17, 2005

POKING your poo with a stick or a brush as it sits in the toilet bowl might not be your idea of fun.

But it is what we can all look forward to. Experts say a pilot scheme has now proved that a national bowel cancer screening program based on this technique could save the lives of nearly 2000 Australians every year.

There are 12,000 new cases a year of bowel cancer, making it the most common internal cancer in Australia. It kills about 90 a week, second only to lung cancer.

Finlay Macrae, head of colorectal medicine and genetics at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, said a pilot screening program running for over 18 months in Adelaide, Melbourne and Queensland city Mackay proved the new screening technologies, using a special brush or a kind of dipstick, had proved acceptable to people in the pilot areas, where participation rates had reached up to 60per cent. This was significant, because anecdotal evidence suggests the faecal occult blood test, on which a screening program would be based, has not been popular.

The test detects tiny amounts of blood, invisible to the naked eye, in the faeces, which can indicate the presence of pre-cancerous polyps.






Pathology laboratories have previously required patients to put a substantial stool sample in a container and submit it for testing either directly through the mail, or via their GP. Not surprisingly, many patients continued to choose the full flush button.

Professor Macrae said the technology used in the pilot projects meant patients could now take minuscule samples simply by sweeping a special brush over the stool in the toilet bowl, or take a small sample with a dipstick, and then post the brush or dipstick.

The Coalition promised in its 2004 re-election policy to work towards a national screening program expected to cost $25.5 million over four years. It aims to ensure that, by 2008, every Australian aged over 55 and indigenous Australians over 45 are screened for bowel cancer at least every two years.

The Australian