New patient guides on colonoscopy and bowel cancer screening

Four new guides are now on this site, written in everyday language. Each one answers a single question, and every figure in them is referenced, with the sources listed at the foot of the page.

• Colonoscopy covers the bowel preparation, which medications need to be stopped, what happens on the day, the risks, how the costs work in the private system and when the next one is due.
• Bowel cancer screening explains the national program, how to get a free kit from 45 when one will not arrive in the post until 50, what a clear result does and does not rule out and when family history means starting earlier.
• A positive screening test is written for the evening the letter arrives. Most people in that position do not have cancer, and the one mistake worth avoiding is doing a second kit to check the first.
• Bowel cancer under 50 sets out why cases are rising in people in their thirties and forties, which symptoms should not be put down to age, and what to ask for.

The guides draw on the national screening program's own monitoring data, Cancer Council Australia's clinical guidelines and research from A/Prof Kariyawasam's group on how colonic pathology in Western Sydney has changed over more than a decade.