Communications breakdown added to Rebecca’s trauma

A BREAKDOWN in communication between two hospitals added to the trauma of a woman wrongly given the all-clear for breast cancer.

Rebecca O’Malley, 41, from Killaloe, Co Clare, was told in 2005 that a lump in her breast was benign, following analysis of a biopsy at Cork University Hospital.

A little more than a year later she was told she had cancer after a second biopsy. The initial biopsy was then re-examined and also tested positive for cancer. On foot of the error, Mark Sparling, the acting general manager of the Mid-West Regional Hospital in Limerick, where Ms O’Malley’s consultant was based, wrote to the Cork hospital asking that it carry out an internal review of cytology reports around the period the misdiagnosis was made.