BreastCheck screening to be reduced by half as 80,000 women face delays

THE number of women invited for mammograms every week by the BreastCheck screening programme will have to be halved when it resumes in September.

This is because of elaborate infection controls due to Covid-19.

BreastCheck head Dr Ann O’Doherty said that before the programme was suspended in March as a result of the Covid19 surge, around 3,000 women a week were invited for X-rays to detect cancer, but when it resumes in more than two months time this will have to be reduced by a half.

She was speaking after the HSE announced BreastCheck and BowelScreen would not return until the autumn.

More than 80,000 women who were due to be invited for a BreastCheck mammogram from March onwards will be affected by delays.

CervicalCheck will begin issuing invitations to women in priority categories – those who have not had a smear test previously or need a one-year recall – from July 6, but it will be October before it clears its backlog of an estimated 90,000 women.

The Irish Cancer Society said it was disappointed that breast and bowel screening were being put back until September.

Disruption due to Covid-19 to the three programmes, which pick up around 1,700 cancers a year in people who are invited for screening and are unaware they have the disease, has led to concerns of delayed diagnosis.

The Diabetic RetinaScreen, which aims to pick up eye disease in people with diabetes, will be back next month.

HSE chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry said HPV testing was now in place in laboratories for cervical screening and this had a better chance of picking up abnormalities.

Letters will be sent to priority women on July 6 inviting them for screening, which will start the following week.

Dr O’Doherty said BreastCheck would be at less than 50pc capacity when it restarted. “But I am very hopeful that as things evolve we will get up to a much faster rate,” she told RTÉ.

“We have been looking after symptomatic women and getting them operated on.”

BreastCheck has 21 mobile units around the country which have had to be modified. She said it was unclear how soon it would take to reduce the backlog.

A major plan by the HSE on the delivery of care in a Covid19 environment reveals the huge extent of the impact on services.

The two-metre physical distancing rules means a quarter of hospital beds will have to be removed. In the Cork and Kerry region, this will result in the loss of 144 beds in Cork University Hospital, 70 fewer beds in University Hospital Kerry and a cut of 50pc capacity in some day surgical and endoscopy units.

At the same time, hospitals need to not go beyond occupancy levels of 80pc-85pc in case of another resurgence of the virus. This could result in 108,000 fewer waiting list patients being treated in a year.

HSE chief Paul Reid said there would need to be big changes in the way health services operate.

It will involve greater use of tele-medicine, treating more people with chronic diseases in their homes and holding outpatient clinics outside of hospital. All newly qualified nurses will be offered a job.

More specialists in areas like critical care will be hired and new training posts created.