The Health Service Executive is expected to announce today which hospitals in the State have breast cancer services where patients can be sure they will receive a proper assessment if they have symptoms of breast disease.
The move is being taken in a bid to restore public confidence in breast cancer services, following the revelation that several women who attended the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise were wrongly given the all-clear.
Portlaoise hospital did not offer patients a triple assessment which is now considered essential for best outcomes in the treatment of symptomatic breast disease. A triple assessment involves a patient being assessed by three specialists - a radiologist, a breast surgeon and a pathologist with breast expertise, with such a multidisciplinary team minimising the risk that any tumour will be missed.
HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm admitted yesterday that confidence had been dented by the Portlaoise controversy. "What we have experienced in Portlaoise would justifiably undermine confidence in our systems," he said.
"What we will be doing is over the next 24 to 48 hours, we will be identifying again the list of centres across the country that we at this present time are willing to stand over in terms of the best possible service we can give at this point and those centres will all have multidisciplinary teams dealing with women referred with breast lumps or other symptoms," he added.
He told RTÉ's News at Onethat clinicians in each centre offering breast cancer services had been asked to confirm a multidisciplinary team approach was being provided. "If one of those centres comes back to us and says they are not 100 per cent happy that they have that competency, then we will identify that to the public," he said.
It was during a review of more than 3,000 mammograms carried out at Portlaoise hospital since November 2003 that the misdiagnosed women were discovered. The review is continuing and six women who attended the hospital over the period are still awaiting results of further tests to see if they were correctly given the all-clear.
Prof Drumm said while the work of a number of radiologists at Portlaoise was being reviewed only one of them had been sent on administrative leave because "a challenge has been brought forward in relation to the readings by only one person". However he said if, on foot of the review, further action needed to be taken, it would be.
Meanwhile, responding to the fact that concerns were raised about the radiological service in Portlaoise as far back as 2005 by Peter Naughton, one of the hospital's surgeons, Prof Drumm said his concerns had been addressed. Mr Naughton expressed concern at the service having inexperienced staff and about women having to undergo unnecessary surgery. Prof Drumm said it was established that no unnecessary surgery had been performed and a second opinion on mammograms was offered to him by St Vincent's hospital in Dublin.
Prof Drumm rejected suggestions he had been insensitive at the weekend by blaming the lack of a proper cancer service in Portlaoise on local protesters. He was saying that women had been treated through a "remarkably inappropriate" structure, with cancer services in the midlands spread across three sites.