Up to 3,000 lives a year could be saved after a new test for bowel cancer was given the go-ahead by the UK National Screening Committee.
The test, known as flexible sigmoidoscopy, allows doctors to see the wall of the bowel and remove any small growths that have the potential to develop into cancer.
Cancer Research UK, which funded the trials, hailed the news as a "breakthrough".
The charity's head of policy, Hazel Nunn, said: "The results were quite outstanding.
"It's not often we would use the word breakthrough, but that's what this is. The trials found that a once-only scope can reduce the incidence of bowel cancer by a third and cut the number of deaths by nearly a half."
Bowel cancer is the third most prevalent cancer in the UK and the second biggest killer.
In 2008, a total of 39,991 people were diagnosed with it. Some 16,259 died.
Dafydd Jones was diagnosed with the disease when he was 26 and now, two years later, is completely free of it.
He campaigns to raise awareness and says the new test will save thousands of lives.
"I always thought it was something that affects older people, but I was wrong," he told Sky News Online.
"I never realised people so young could get it. And it gets misdiagnosed a lot too, sometimes as Crohn's disease or irritable bowel syndrome.
"So anything that speeds up detection is massively welcome because it will save lives."
Everybody in England aged 55-64 will be invited for the new test.
The government plans to invest £60m over the next four years to fund the extra screening.
Professor Julietta Patnick, director of the NHS Cancer Screening Programmes, said the new test would be "an important addition to our existing bowel cancer screening programme".
Currently people aged 60 to 69 are invited to send off stool samples as part of the screening programme, to which the new test will now be added.
Source: news.sky.com
www.cancerclaims.co.uk
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