CervicalCheck patients to be granted review

The late CervicalCheck campaigner Ruth Morrissey. Photo: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie

CervicalCheck patients diagnosed with cancer after receiving a negative result from their screening will, from now on, be granted the option for a review of their case under new HSE guidelines.

The executive today published its reviews into incidences of interval cancer — that is, illness diagnosed after one negative test and before a subsequent one — amid a new programme of recommendations for the auditing of such cases.

All instances of interval cancer in all three cancer screening programmes — cervical, bowel, and breast — will be reviewed, regardless of whether or not a patient chooses the option.

Should they not wish to proceed, the process will be anonymised, the briefing heard.

It also emerged that the executive is hopeful of relaunching BreastCheck, which along with other services had been stood down due to the Covid-19 pandemic before the end of October.

Fiona Murphy, CEO of National Screening Services, said that CervicalCheck and BowelScreen have broadly caught up with their Covid-19 backlog, having relaunched in July and August respectively.

CervicalCheck hit the headlines in 2018 after it emerged that several women had received incorrect negative diagnoses for the illness and had never been told of that fact. 

Professor Susan O’Reilly, who led the review of that screening programme, said that anonymised reviews may need to be underpinned with legislation.

The briefing heard that in 40% of cases of interval breast cancer those diagnosed do not wish to have their case reviewed.

Out of 17 international screening programmes, meanwhile, just three of those disclose the findings of reviews to patients as standard, with a reluctance to upset patients and an adherence to strict timelines among the most frequent reasons given for that fact.

Some 260 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer in Ireland, just under half of whom will be aged under 45.