The Evolving Use of Faecal Immunochemical Testing – Accelerated by the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many challenges for clinicians and supporting services that have driven the need to manage patients differently. With current changes in the availability of endoscopy and laboratory testing resources, new solutions have had to be developed.

Prior to COVID-19 the role of the faecal immunochemical test (FIT), in addition to screening for bowel cancer, was for the symptomatic assessment of primary care patients, as guided by NICE DG30. However, with the reduction in services available, FIT is now also being utilised for triaging patients on existing secondary care waiting lists and patients being referred under two-week-wait (2WW) pathways from Primary Care. Uptake for this has varied nationally with some areas of the UK seeing a large increase in FIT requests as the test becomes included in more pathways.

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