Fake Cancer OKs Scare Women

Irish Voice News

Fake Cancer OKs Scare Women

November 7, 2007

By Paddy Clancy

IRELAND’S top health executive Professor Brendan Drumm has described a series of botched breast screenings at the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise as appalling.

Eight women were given the all clear after screenings at the hospital but were since told, following a review of their cases, that they had breast cancer.

As fury spread over the scandal it was revealed that further tests are being carried out on 19 more women to see if they were correctly diagnosed.

Drumm, chief executive of the Health Service Executive (HSE), claimed the organization, revamped in recent years when regional health boards were merged, had inherited the system at Portlaoise and had tried to change it. He claimed change was being obstructed by the public and other interest groups.

The women’s scans were among thousands reviewed by St. Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, in conjunction with BreastCheck, following the decision to send a consultant radiologist on administrative leave at the end of August after concerns were raised about the mammogram readings dating back to 2003.

Three thousand mammograms and 2,500 ultrasounds on breast cancer patients who attended the Portlaoise hospital since November 2003 were to be reviewed.

Drumm said some of Ireland’s cancer systems do not provide quality care and “the system in Portlaoise was totally unfair to the women who use it” and to the doctors that work there.

He said the irony was that despite efforts to change the system there were street marches in protest at losses of local cancer services in favor of the transformation program aimed at upgrading the system and creating specialist centers of excellence.

Drumm said the transformation was ongoing and succeeding.

One of the eight women found to have breast cancer after being given the all-clear spoke out under cover of anonymity on RTE.

She said she would never trust anyone in the health service in Portlaoise again. She said she was given the all-clear after a mammogram at Portlaoise in July, but sought new tests at St. Vincent’s in September and was then diagnosed.

“I think it’s a scandal. It’s going to be a long road for me and for my family as well because we’re devastated,” she said.

She urged any woman with suspected breast cancer to go to one of the big hospitals specializing in its treatment.

“What’s wrong with the world? This is 2007. We’re not in the ‘70s or the ‘60s. It’s unreal. Doctors, stand up and tell us what’s wrong,” she pleaded.

Health Minister Mary Harney said the woman had done a public service by speaking out. The minister said that what happened in Portlaoise should not have occurred.

“It has happened because of our failure in the past to put in place centers of excellence, which could never have happened under the old health board regime,” Harney said.

Fuel was added to the controversy when leading breast cancer specialist Niall O’Higgins said he did not know if he could trust the health service to look after patients properly.

O’Higgins, chairperson of an expert group which drew up national standards for breast cancer services, said the government had failed to do anything about improving services for the past seven years.

He said the HSE should outline its time frame for delivering specialist cancer treatment centers, first mooted in a report produced by him in 2000.

Eight centers, including four in Dublin and one each in Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford, have been identified, but how the government plans to fund or resource them has not been outlined in its National Cancer Control Strategy.

O’Higgins said there had been “an inordinate delay” in setting up the specialist centers, which would include a triple assessment for women with breast cancer, guaranteeing that three specialists examined biopsy results.

Harney said the centers will be in place by 2009.

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