Breast cancer scandal ‘may date back four more years’

AN EXTRA 140,000 women may have been affected by the breast cancer screening scandal than originally thought, an expert warned yesterday.

A new analysis published in a letter in The Lancet found that the problems may have begun four years earlier than the date announced by Jeremy Hunt.

Earlier this month, the Health Secretary revealed that 450,000 women aged 68 to 71 had not been invited to their final routine screening due to a computer error dating back to 2009.

But Prof Peter Sasieni, a cancer screening and prevention researcher at King’s College London, believes the problems could have started as early as 2005. He studied data from the breast cancer screening programme between 2004 and 2017, looking at the number of eligible women who were sent invitations each year from the ages 45-70.

Writing in The Lancet he said that between 2004 and 2005 – when the programme was extended to the age of 70 – the number of invitations sent to women aged 65 to 70 was “very low”.

A third of eligible women should have been invited every year, but Prof Sasieni claimed the figures showed it was 31 per cent in 2005-6, rising to almost 35 per cent in 2016-17.

By comparison, between 34 per cent and 38 per cent of people aged 50 to 64 were invited each year.

The difference amounts to 140,000 fewer people being contacted than expected between 2005 and 2008 – and a total of more than 502,000 missing out since 2005, Prof Sasieni concluded.

The letter states: “Data that might have alerted people to the lower-thanexpected 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.”

Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive at Breast Cancer Now, said it was “concerning” to hear that even more women could have been affected. “We urge Public Health England to make clear the full extent of the error as soon as possible,” she said.

However, Prof John Newton, director of health improvement at PHE, told the BBC: “This is a flawed analysis which fails to take into account some important facts, such as when the breast screening programme was rolled out to all 70-year-olds in England or when a clinical trial was started called Age X.” He said PHE was focused on supporting those not invited to their final screening.

An independent review has been launched into the computer error, which Mr Hunt said was discovered in January and may have led to up to 270 women having their lives cut short.

“The independent review will look at all aspects of the Breast Screening Service to identify any lessons PHE and the NHS can learn,” said Prof Newton.