Catch-up tests ‘will trigger surge in needless ops’
THOUSANDS of women will have to undergo unnecessary surgery in the wake of the screening scandal, experts have warned.
By October this year, up to 5,000 women are expected to have had ‘catch-up’ mammograms which will detect tumours that do not cause harm.
NHS guidance suggests that while deaths are prevented through early diagnosis, three times the number of women saved are overdiagnosed. The rates of overdiagnosis are believed to increase with age. Jeremy Hunt promised hundreds of thousands of women affected by the screening blunder would be checked for breast cancer within six months.
But some leading specialists insisted it was ‘crazy’ to test the women – now aged 70-79 – and said it would pressure many to undergo invasive treatment on tumours which turn out to be harmless.
University College London’s Professor Michael Baum labelled the catch-up tests a ‘face-saving exercise’. ‘This hysteria being whipped up is cruel,’ he told the Mirror. ‘Those diagnosed will almost certainly have surgery, radiotherapy and sometimes hormone therapy. Dying from breast cancer at that age is very rare.’
Doctors warned Mr Hunt’s pledge was ‘unachievable’ and that screening units would be forced to work during evenings and over weekends to clear the backlog.