By Karen Allen BBC Health Correspondent

The Cancer Research UK study into the benefits of screening for bowel cancer has concluded that it could save thousands of lives a year.

The results into the test, known technically as sigmoidoscopy, have certainly yielded impressive results.

We should perhaps be taking this form of the disease as seriously as breast or cervical cancer

They are significant because it could bring us a step closer to the holy grail that many health campaigners have been striving for - a national screening programme for bowel cancer/colorectal cancer.

It is a disease which is the third most common form of cancer in the UK but one which is lamentably under represented in the competitive world of health lobbying.

It was only after HRH Prince Charles recent remarks that we should be able to speak openly about "bottoms" that the subject has started to get some coverage, even though it seems virtually everybody knows somebody who has had bowel cancer.

Responsibility

The media surely has a responsibility to act here.

This latest trial was a salutory reminder that we should perhaps be taking this form of the disease as seriously as breast or cervical cancer.

A four minute examination of the bowel using a thin flexible tube with a camera attached to the end, revealed that a quarter of those tested had polyps; half of which were pre-cancerous tumors.

Volunteers were in the 55-64 age group which account for 7% of all bowel cancer cases.

Although in the United States, investigations like these are a routine part of a patient's annual health check, at the moment in the UK they are only used when patients exhibit symptoms of bowel cancer - bleeding; discomfort etc.

And by then, for some it may be too late.

The scientists argue that a national screening programme could prevent around five thousand cases a year and end death rates by about 40%.

Cost implications

Treating bowel cancer in the UK costs in the region of �300 million a year.

Compliance rates would have to be pretty high to make it cost effective

Those behind this latest research believe that the cost of setting up the programme would be offset by savings on avoiding the need for treatment. But is that really the case?

The price of running a bowel cancer screening programme would be similar to that for breast screening - ie in the order of �52 million a year.

But doctors and nurses need to be trained to carry out the delicate procedure and compliance rates would have to be pretty high to make it cost effective.

Seven per cent of bowel cancer cases could be spotted in the target age group but is this enough to justify this type of public health measure?

All these are questions that the government's medical advisors are no doubt pondering as they give an enthusiastic but cautious welcome to this research.

Ministers have already promised to extend cancer screening programmes in the future - after all more screening would surely be a vote winner - but they have to wrestle with the fact that this is just one of a number of techniques currently jostling for attention.