screening

The largest randomised trial ever run inside a screening programme: nearly four million women cluster-randomised to an extra mammogram below 50 or above 70, and the reason the programme's age range has not moved.

No randomised trial has shown that screening survivors for a second cancer reduces death from it. A registry-based randomised trial, which invites rather than enrols, is the only design that could answer this at an affordable cost.

Radiotherapy to the abdomen or pelvis raises the risk of cancer in the bowel that sat in the field, and the risk is confined to the irradiated segment. For adults no country runs an organised colonoscopy programme afterwards, so bleeding or a change in bowel habit years later should be investigated rather than put down to the old treatment.

This is the second cancer with a real screening programme attached, and the one most worth asking about by name. A woman who had radiotherapy to breast tissue between the ages of 10 and 35, most often for Hodgkin lymphoma, is eligible in England for annual magnetic resonance imaging from age 25 or 30, and being missed from that list has happened often enough that asking is reasonable.

Breast radiologist who co-developed the Mirai AI model that predicts breast cancer risk from a mammogram.

The Nottingham chest physician who chairs the UK clinical expert group for lung cancer and advises the National Screening Committee: the person whose job it is to turn the screening evidence into an NHS service.

Principal investigator of the National Lung Screening Trial, which first proved CT screening saves lives.

Led the NELSON trial, which confirmed CT screening cuts lung cancer deaths in Europe and shaped screening policy.

The Liverpool scientist behind the UK Lung Cancer Screening trial and the Liverpool Lung Project risk model, which is one of the two rules the NHS uses to decide who is invited for a scan.

Led MASAI, the first randomised trial of AI-supported mammography screening, which found more cancers with half the radiologist workload.

The British trial that tested a cheap, staged alternative to scanning everyone, and found it did not work: more than half the cancers never showed up in the sputum at all.

NCI epidemiologist whose HPV natural history studies underpin HPV-based cervical screening and risk-based management worldwide.

The Leeds respiratory physician who ran the Yorkshire Lung Screening Trial, the trial that worked out which risk rule the NHS should use to decide who gets a screening scan.

Led NordICC, the first randomised trial of screening colonoscopy, which found smaller benefits than many expected.

Survivors are screened for second cancers on the strength of how large their risk is, not on the strength of a trial showing that screening them saves lives. For most organs there is no programme at all.

The Nottingham trial that proved a home stool test posted to a whole population reduces deaths from bowel cancer, and so created the NHS screening programme.

Epidemiologist who showed HPV vaccination has nearly eliminated cervical cancer in vaccinated English women and leads NHS-Galleri.

The Manchester respiratory physician who showed that if you park a CT scanner in a supermarket car park in a poor part of the city, people come, and the cancers you find are early ones.

Computer scientist who built Mirai and Sybil, AI models that predict breast and lung cancer risk years before diagnosis.

The oncogeneticist who found most of the common genetic variants that raise a man's risk of prostate cancer, and whose work is the reason the UK's first prostate screening programme is defined by a gene rather than by an age.

Three systems have built screening for survivors and they do not agree. England runs an organised programme with fixed ages and automatic referral; the United States issues a guideline and leaves the arranging to the patient; the Netherlands runs a national survivorship clinic network. They differ on when to start and whom to include.

Leads iStopMM, which screened most of Iceland's adults for myeloma precursors to test whether early detection helps.

Skin cancer is the commonest second cancer after almost any treatment, and the commonest one left out of the counts, because registries record non-melanoma skin cancers inconsistently or not at all. Most are basal cell carcinomas, most are curable when treated, and the practical answer is to look at irradiated skin and to have anything that bleeds, crusts or does not heal in six weeks examined.

The biggest single UK lung screening cohort, run across diverse and deprived London boroughs, which showed the same early-stage shift and also showed that the poorest were the least likely to come.

England runs a named screening programme for women who had radiotherapy to breast tissue when young, with exact ages and tests set out in its own documents. Surveillance begins at 25 or 30 depending on your age when irradiated, or eight years after the radiotherapy, whichever is later, and referral runs through a national dataset.

Gastroenterologist who leads cancer research at Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research and is a leading figure in colorectal cancer screening.

The thyroid is among the most radiation-sensitive tissues there is, and neck or upper chest radiotherapy raises the risk of thyroid cancer for decades. Whether to look for it is genuinely unsettled: the international guideline panel compared ultrasound against feeling the neck, found neither better, and wrote a decision aid instead of a recommendation.

The trial that will decide whether Britain screens for prostate cancer, designed with the screening committee's input and built from the start to answer the question about Black men that every previous trial was too white to answer.

The trial that showed one look inside the lower bowel in your late fifties can prevent a bowel cancer for life, and that a single test is enough.

The British pilot that showed a risk-model-selected CT scan finds lung cancer early, and whose long follow-up gave the mortality signal that helped justify a national programme.

Led UKCTOCS, the 200,000-woman trial that found ovarian cancer screening does not save lives despite detecting cancers earlier.

The Leeds trial that answered the operational questions a national screening programme actually has to answer: who responds, which risk rule to use, what it costs, and whether stopping smoking can be built into the same appointment.