Technical glitch in UK breast screening program may have affected 50,000 more women than previously thought
Less than a month after British Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced that up to 270 women may have died of breast cancer after a technical error neglected to send 450,000 invites for final routine mammograms, one doctor is warning the number of failed invites may have been closer to 500,000, The Independent reports.
Peter Sasieni, a cancer screening and prevention researcher at King’s College London, claims the system error arose earlier than 2009. It’s more likely the glitch dates back to 2005, he said—the year the country’s breast screening program was extended to women up to 70 years old.
“Data that might have alerted people to the lower-than-expected number of invitations being sent to women aged 70 were publicly available, but no one looked at them carefully enough,” he wrote in a research letter published in The Lancet. “Some of the fault lies in the way the data was presented, but it is also unclear whose responsibility it is to monitor such outcomes.”
Still, Public Health England, the entity that monitors the national screening program, told The Independent that Sasieni’s analysis was “flawed.” A spokesperson said the research failed to take into account the timing of the new roll-out and an important clinical trial known as Age X. PHE is conducting its own independent review of the issue, he said.
Read The Independent’s full report below:
After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.