Cancer scan errors ‘may date back four more years’
THE ERROR that led to hundreds of thousands of women missing out on breast screening could date back four years further than previously thought, a cancer expert has claimed.
Last month Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said a computer glitch dating back to 2009 was behind 450,000 women aged 68-71 not being invited to screening – an error which could have shortened 270 lives.
But Professor Peter Sasieni, of King’s College London, said the problem could have started in 2005, meaning thousands more women would be affected. In a letter to medical journal
Prof Sasieni said after the programme was extended to women aged 65-70 in 2004, a third of eligible women should have been invited each year.
The number invited in 2004-5 was “very low”, Prof Sasieni said, and it rose from 31 per cent the following year to 35 per cent in 2016-17. The difference meant more than 500,000 could have missed out on invitations since 2005, he concluded.
He said: “Data that might have alerted people to the lowerthan-expected number of invitations being sent to women aged 70 were publicly available, but no one looked at them carefully enough.
“Some of the fault lies in the way the data were presented, but it is also unclear whose responsibility it is to monitor such outcomes.”
An independent review has been launched into the error, which Mr Hunt said was discovered in January.
Professor John Newton, Public Health England’s director of health improvement, said Prof Sasieni’s analysis was “flawed”.
He said: “Our top priority is making sure that all the women that did not receive an invitation for a screen are supported.”