Call to confine breast cancer screening to those who need it

BREAST CANCER centres have become so successful that they are now attracting healthy women who do not need screening, according to the State’s new cancer treatment supremo.

Dr Susan O’Reilly, who started as director of the Cancer Control Programme last month, said that because of public anxiety about the disease, the eight centres in the State were starting to see women coming in who didn’t have serious concerns.

“Maybe we should be working more closely with GPs to build their confidence and tell them they have nothing to worry about,” she told a forum for cancer care specialists in Dublin yesterday.

The number of women attending the clinics is up 20 per cent this year, but the number of breast cancers being diagnosed remains relatively static, at about 2,600 forecast for this year.

She said she was also keen to get healthy patients who had been checked out back into their community rather than “falling into the habit” of bringing them back every year. “It’s about developing a discipline about discharge and not creating dependencies on a sophisticated specialist system.”

Dr O’Reilly was making her first public comments since taking over as director of the programme from Prof Tom Keane, who was widely praised for improving cancer services over the past three years.

She grew up in Wales and studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin, and was previously the vice-president of cancer care at the British Columbia Cancer Agency in Vancouver.

She said Ireland had made significant strides in cancer services since 2007 and patients could expect further improvement in survival rates for many cancers. For breast cancer, the five-year survival rates stand at 80 per cent.

Dr O’Reilly said she wasn’t under any illusions about the country’s financial situation but was optimistic that cancer services could be sustained and progress made in specific areas. Cancer was a priority area in health where effective intervention could make a difference.

Screening programmes not only detected cancers but could prevent them too through the removal of polyps and lesions that had the potential to become cancerous.

Asked what she hoped to achieve over her five-year term, Dr O’Reilly said she hoped to extend the BreastCheck programme to women over the age of 65.

She also aimed to complete the introduction of radiotherapy treatment programmes and to further develop chemotherapy and other medical oncology services in a systemic way.