Summary review of cervical test results due next week

The summary report of the review of over 1,000 CervicalCheck smear test results, by an expert panel from the UK's Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists (RCOG), is expected to be published next week.

A spokesperson for Minister for Health Simon Harris said that he has not yet received the report and is not due to be given it today.

However, it is understood the report should be received in time for a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday and be published afterwards.

The expert panel was tasked with determining, wherever possible, cases where there were any failures to prevent cancer, or to intervene at an earlier stage.

It has informed the 1,050 women who participated in the review of cases where there was a failure to identify abnormal cells and if this represented a missed opportunity to diagnose cancers at an earlier stage.

Where errors were identified by the review, it may not have been possible to say conclusively that they resulted in a poorer outcome for the individual woman.

It has also informed women of cases where the RCOG review of the slide review is in agreement with the original CervicalCheck result.

The individual reports produced for each woman do not determine whether a failure to detect underlying abnormal cells, when her smear test was being examined, was negligent, in a legal sense.

At a recent Oireachtas Health Committee meeting, the Health Service Executive indicated that it expected the percentage of cases where the review found a different result - what is termed a discordant rate - to be substantially less than 40%, which would be the upper end.

All of the individual reports received from the RCOG were subject to a verification exercise by the HSE to ensure the details were correct.

Queries which required clarification were reverted to the UK team by the HSE, according to the most recent CervicalCheck Steering Group minutes.

It was agreed that the RCOG summary report would be released to the minister, after all of the women who took part had received the results of their individual reviews.

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In the wake of the CervicalCheck crisis, in May of last year,  Minister Harris commissioned the expert panel to review smear histories.

This was offered to each woman who had developed cervical cancer, having taken part in the CervicalCheck screening programme since it was set up in 2008.

The RCOG review was assisted by the British Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology.

The reviewers were aware that all of the women went on to develop cervical cancer.

But when doing their fresh review, they were not aware of the CervicalCheck result at the time the original smear was reviewed.