Cervical screening error numbers 'may be higher'
- Published
More women who were wrongly told they did not need cervical screening may have gone on to develop cancer.
It was announced on Thursday that one woman had died from cervical cancer after being wrongly excluded from Scotland's screening programme.
Public Health Minister Maree Todd told Holyrood 434 women who had partial hysterectomies after 1997 were wrongly told they did not need to be screened.
She told BBC Scotland: "I'm afraid we may well be looking at higher numbers."
The minister said there were still at least 500 women who underwent procedures before 1997 whose records needed to be checked.
She said their records were more difficult to access but that work should be done by the end of July.
Ms Todd said that "as a precaution" they were also looking at the records of every single woman who has been excluded because of hysterectomy - about 200,000 patients.
Laborious process
The minister said the Scottish government was first alerted to the issue in March.
She said the announcement was only made the day before the Scottish Parliament went into summer recess because there was a "laborious process of going through their records" to identify the women before it was put in the public domain.
All the women affected were contacted by letter on Tuesday, she said.
The error came to light in a routine audit of a single unnamed health board. All health boards were then examined and 434 women were found to have been wrongly excluded from screening.
Ms Todd said a "small number" of the women had subsequently developed cervical cancer. She said the number was less than five but she could not say exactly how many because it risked identifying the women.
Most hysterectomies involve the removal of the cervix and then there is no further need for cervical cancer screening.
However, sometimes a hysterectomy is performed where part or all of the cervix remains and those women should remain on the screening programme if they are within the eligible age range.
Ms Todd told parliament it was an "extremely complex issue, spanning a number of decades and involving a variety of potential errors".
She told BBC Scotland the errors included:
- Women who had gone into hospital for a total hysterectomy - removal of both the womb and cervix - but for "technical reasons" that had not been carried out, however, the NHS "coding" recorded the intended surgery.
- Other issues occurred with the pathology lab finding cervical tissue which led to the presumption it was a total hysterectomy when actually there was still cervical tissue in the women.
- A further issue was that the correct information was communicated to primary care but it was wrongly presumed to be a total hysterectomy as this is what the majority of procedures are.
At Holyrood on Thursday, Scottish Labour health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said it was a "extremely serious situation" and asked why the issue was "not picked up by audits of the screening process in the past".
She added: "The truth is we do not yet know the full scale of this error."
Ms Baillie said there was an "significant backlog" in screening of about 180,000 tests because of the pandemic, and delays of six months or even more for those who have been screened and need treatment.
Scottish Conservative health spokeswoman Annie Wells said it was hard to comprehend how the loved ones of the woman who died, and all of the other women who had been affected, must be feeling as a result of the error.
She added: "The SNP government must ensure that every effort is made to urgently contact any more women who have been excluded from screening programmes as quickly as possible.
"Women will understandably be concerned by this news and should be offered support at every turn."
Have you been affected by the issues raised in this story? Email: haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.