NHS breast screening error leaves 309,000 women with an agonising six month wait to find out if they have cancer
HUNDREDS of thousands of women will today begin an agonising six-month wait to find out if they have breast cancer after a "colossal" NHS IT glitch.
Health bosses are trying to contact 309,000 women who missed screening scans because of computer failings dating back almost a decade.
Up to 270 women could have died as a result of the blunder, which meant 450,000 women aged between 68 and 71 weren't invited for their last mammogram, between 2009 and the start of this year.
The deadly mistake was flagged by NHS bosses last year, but Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt waited four months to tell the public.
He revealed the "administrative incompetency" to Parliament yesterday but said that women affected would have to wait until the end of October for their checks to avoid disrupting screening for those aged between 50 and 70.
Nurse Patricia Minchin is one of those women.
The 75-year-old was diagnosed with breast cancer after the NHS failed to offer her a scan - with the disease since spreading to her lymph nodes.
Grandmother Patricia should have been invited for a mammogram in 2013 when she turned 70 but she wasn't and was diagnosed with breast cancer two years later, Telegraph reports.
"I feel so disappointed. I don’t know if I’m going to survive," she said.
"I would like an explanation from somebody why this happened, why I didn’t get a recall... why didn’t they pick up that I hadn’t had a mammogram? That I was one of those people?"
She accused the NHS of a "cover up", adding: "They obviously knew about it for some time and they shouldn’t have covered it up for so long.
"It was no surprise to me that it had happened. It was a surprise they kept it quiet. They must have known."
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Widower Brian Gough said his wife Trixie never received a letter inviting her to go for a screening in 2009 - and that a scan in October 2010 revealed she had stage-three breast cancer.
The 77-year-old from Norfolk said he was watching the television on Wednesday when the news of the screening error broke, leaving him "shell shocked".
I would like an explanation from somebody why this happened, why I didn’t get a recall... why didn’t they pick up that I hadn’t had a mammogram? That I was one of those people?
Patricia Minchin, breast cancer patient
"There has always got to be some blame these things don't just happen ... it is never the computer that goes wrong it is the person that put the information in or took it out," he said.
"Somebody somewhere along the line has made a massive error - we are talking 450,000 letters that should have gone out."
Mr Gough said she missed the wedding of her grandson as she was too ill to attend, and died just before her granddaughter's nuptials.
"All of that she missed because she didn't get diagnosed and she didn't know anything about it until a year too late," he said.
Mauveen Stone, from Somerset, also believes she was affected by the scandal.
The 84-year-old had her last screening in 1995 when she was 62 and was given the all clear, but she claims she was never invited to another screening or her final scan when she turned 70.
It was only last year when she discovered a lump in her breast that she saw a doctor and was diagnosed with cancer, according to the Mail.
"It was not something I thought about until I felt the lump. As my cancer was slow growing I don't know how long it has been present or if it would have made a difference if I went earlier," she said.
"But it may well have been spotted earlier if I had been sent the invitation. I was very lucky it was slow growing. Other women might not have been so lucky."
Campaigners have demanded the health service hire hundreds of extra staff or send women abroad to get checks to mitigate the mistake.
Labour has also called for the NHS to be given extra resources to carry out the extra checks on affected women.
Of the 450,000 women affected, 309,000 are thought to still be alive.
All women in the UK between the ages of 50 and 70 are invited for a breast screening every three years, with two million checked each year.
Experts warn early diagnosis is vital to save lives from breast cancer which strikes around 55,000 Brits a year, killing 11,000.
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO IF YOU THINK YOU'RE AFFECTED?
WOMEN who are affected will receive a letter informing them this month, Mr Hunt said.
Those who are worried can, in the meantime, call a helpline set up by the NHS to offer advice - on 0800 169 2692.
Mr Hunt said women affected will advised of their next steps according to their age now.
Those under 72 will be invited for a catch up mammogram, which will be scheduled in the next six months.
PHE said today they expect all rescreens to be completed by October this year.
Those women over the age of 72 will be advised of whether another mammogram will be beneficial to them.
For older women, treating breast cancer can prove more arduous than the disease itself, and so women over 72 will be offered support and expert advice.
Mr Hunt stressed it is a woman's individual choice, and anyone who wants another screening will be offered one.
Sally Greenbook, policy manager at Breast Cancer Now, said: "This is an uncertain time for these women, many of whom will be feeling anxious at the news of this error. So it is absolutely crucial that they are seen as quickly as possible.
"We are concerned about how the NHS will cope as it tackles the huge job of screening all of these women, as well as older women who will choose to refer themselves, while continuing to run its current service for women aged 50 to 70.
"The diagnostic workforce was already at crisis capacity so now the gaps need to be addressed as a matter of urgency.
This is an uncertain time for these women, many of whom will be feeling anxious at the news of this error. So it is absolutely crucial that they are seen as quickly as possible.
Sally Greenbook, policy manager at Breast Cancer Now
"This should include at least 200 more mammographers and 50 more breast radiologists in place to ensure that women are not unnecessarily delayed in having the mammogram they are entitled to. It’s the very least that we can expect in light of this terrible error."
Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive at Breast Cancer Now, said it was "beyond belief" that such "colossal" error could occur.
"We are deeply saddened and extremely concerned to hear that so many women have been let down by such a colossal systematic failure," she added.
"That hundreds of thousands of women have not received the screening invitations they’ve been relying upon, at a time when they may be most at risk of breast cancer, is totally unacceptable.
"For those women who will have gone on to develop breast cancers that could have been picked up earlier through screening, this is a devastating error.
"It is beyond belief that this major mistake has been sustained for almost a decade and we need to know why this has been allowed to happen."
Jane Murphy, clinical nurse specialist at Breast Cancer Care, said time frame for affected women to get checked should be "kept to a minimum".
"It’s incredibly difficult, we speak to women all the time on our helpline that are waiting for a referral for a breast clinic or waiting for results of a test and that uncertainty is sometimes harder than knowing," she told The Sun Online.
"Having that uncertainty over whether there is a problem or not, ideally, would be kept to a minimum.
"It’s a long wait if you are one of those women. We encourage anyone if they have any symptoms they are concerned about they should go to their GP."
EARLY DIAGNOSIS KEY TO SAVING LIVES
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed form of the disease in UK women.
One in eight women across the nation will develop the disease in their lifetime and experts advise that women should check their breasts each month for signs of cancer, starting in their 20s.
Nearly 1,000 people die from breast cancer every month in the UK, with the disease killing around 11,500 women and 80 men each year.
Survival rates for the disease vary depending on age and the stage at which it's picked up, highlighting why early diagnosis is so important.
Every breast cancer patient caught at stage 1 survives at least one year, while at stage four that number is just 63 per cent.
Five-year survival rates are 99 per cent if diagnosed at stage 1 but plummets to just 15 per cent at stage 4 - the most advanced stage, when the cancer has already spread.
The age group most likely to survive the disease is women aged 60-69, with a five-year survival rate of 92 per cent, based on data from 2009-2013.
Those aged between 40 and 59 also have a good chance of surviving breast cancer.
But after the age of 69 survival rates drop and just 70 per cent and women aged over 80 are expected to beat the disease, according to Cancer Research UK.
As with any cancer early detection is crucial for survival, that’s why regular mammograms are vital.
Around two million women are screened for breast cancer each year.
The NHS Breast Screening Programme is currently for women aged between 50 and 70, and involves screening every three years.
In some parts of England, this has been opened to women aged 47 to 73 years old as part of a trial.
Speaking in the Commons yesterday Mr Hunt said: "Irrespective of when the incident started, the fact is that for many years the oversight of our screening programme has not been good enough.
"Many families will be deeply disturbed by these revelations, not least because there will be some people who receive a letter having had a recent diagnosis of breast cancer.
"For them and others it is incredibly upsetting to know that you did not receive an invitation for screening at the correct time and totally devastating to hear you may have lost or be about to lose a loved one because of administrative incompetency."
MORE ON BREAST CANCER
The NHS has promised to pay staff overtime and to use the private sector to offer all women who missed a screening an appointment by the end of October.
Mr Hunt said women could not be seen sooner because "one of our biggest priorities is that women between the ages of 50 and 70, when the screens are of their highest clinical value, do not find their regular screens delayed by the extra screening".
The Health Secretary announced an independent review is being launched to investigate what happened, and why the mistake was allowed to go undetected for almost a decade.
It will be chaired by Lynda Thomas, the chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support, and leading oncologist Prof Martin Gore, and is expected to report on its findings in six months.
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