Reports into breast cancer misdiagnoses fail to address equipment or staff

TWO issues were at the heart of concerns raised about the mammograms taken at Portlaoise Hospital — the equipment used and the staff who used it.

Remarkably, neither were investigated in the three reports produced by the Department of Health and the Health Service Executive yesterday.

Author of one of the reports, Dr Ann O’Doherty, tasked with reviewing the mammography service from a medical point of view, said images produced by the mammogram machine were of poor quality and hampered diagnosis, a problem she put down to the processing methods rather than the actual machine.