A milestone achieved by the scientists who claim to have developed a 'screening test' which takes mere five minutes to detect bowel cancer and at the same time cuts down the risk of developing the disease in future.

This new test involves a history of 16-year-old study, 'The Lancet' reported.

It involved more than 170,000 respondents aged between 55 and 64 who later saw decline in deaths by 43 per cent, just by the examination of the lower colon and rectum.

One fourth of the volunteers underwent a sigmoidoscopy procedure, where a camera mounted on a thin, flexible tube - FlexiScope, was inserted into the bowel and looked for polyps or symptomless growths in the rectum and colon. Eventually it was painlessly removed.

Lead researcher, Wendy Atkin of Imperial College London stated this procedure to be the most successful bowel cancer screening technique.