Meath women worried about smear test results

Anxious women across County Meath have been contacting their GPs with worries about smear test results following the Cervical Check scandal.

The calls follow the news that 17 women have died following a smear testing error and that over half of the 208 women affected by the cervical check controversy were not told of the delay in their cancer diagnosis.
Dr Marie Scully of the Abbey Medical Centre in Navan said a lot of people were booking for their regular smears, more than usual, which suggests women have not lost complete confidence in Cervical Check!
“However, there are also quite a lot of people requesting smears done privately and also to inquire if they can also have HPV testing done along with cytology, which suggests some loss of confidence in Cervical Check.” She points out that cervical cytology is a screening test, not a diagnostic one and in common with all screening tests it will have false positives and false negatives.
“The problem with current controversy was the lack of open disclosure immediately, not that the smear failed to pick up the diagnosis.”
Dr Scully points out that GPs were not informed of results of any audits and were not involved in 'sitting' on them.
“There seems to be a little confusion about this in the mind of the public from what I read. My understanding is that the audits were done on women diagnosed with cervical cancer and these audits were to look back at their screening history. In the same way Minister Harris has announced a look back for all women diagnosed with cervical cancer, which will be done by RCOG in UK. The clinicians who were informed of the results in current controversy were hospital consultants, not GPs.
While women had been contacting doctors all last week, despite reassurances that any woman who wanted a repeat smear would get it and it would be paid for, there were no arrangements in place until an agreement was reached on Friday evening.
Dr Seamus McMenamin of the Bedford Medical Centre said they have had lots of enquiries on this. One of the difficulties they had was that they had no information from CervicalCheck or the HSE .
“The Taoiseach and other bodies are advising people to go to their GP but we have had no guidance on how to proceed such as which women should have repeat smears - should we be recalling women for smears or waiting for women to contact us?,” he said.