Hospital admits new cancer error
A Lancashire hospital has admitted that a further woman was wrongly given the all-clear for breast cancer after screening errors, taking the total to 19.
It emerged in September that the women had been misdiagnosed by a radiologist at Accrington Victoria Community Hospital, but the BBC has found that another woman was also recalled and later had a mastectomy. East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust admitted that she was the 19th woman to be misdiagnosed and has apologised.
Susan Gilmore, from Earby in Barnoldswick, Lancashire, was told she was all clear by the same radiologist at the hospital outside of the period under review, in 2002 and 2005. But she was recalled to a different consultant in December 2008 and found she had the disease.
Mrs Gilmore, speaking to BBC's Inside Out North West Programme, which is to be screened on Monday, said: "It was only after I read about it, because I wasn't one of the 18 who were [originally] recalled.
"Once I'd read those reports I started to mull things over in my mind and thought, it's going to be this man, it's going to be this same consultant who sent me home twice."
The original blunder came to light through internal monitoring in the screening service which sparked an independent investigation, revealed in September 2009.
Of the 355 cases reviewed in the study, 85 women were re-tested and 14 were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. A further four had a non-invasive cancer which had not progressed.
The radiologist involved last screened patients in December 2008 and has been suspended since April 2009.