The report of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists into the CervicalCheck screening service will not be published until all the women involved in the review have been informed of their results, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has told the Dáil. The Irish Times reported that a large number of previously missed abnormalities have been uncovered by the review of smear tests carried out by the CervicalCheck cancer screening programme over a period of 10 years. Ms O’Reilly said that “possibly hundreds” of women were affected by the review, which found hundreds of “discordant” results after re-examining the slides of more than 1,000 women who had been tested for cervical cancer under CervicalCheck, and were incorrectly given the all-clear. “Eight [cases] get picked up on subsequent screening or when they [women with cervical cancer] have symptoms,” he said. “Even the best screening programme in the world had had [a] very high number of false negatives,” he added.

Source: The Irish Times November 19, 2019 18:33 UTC