A NEGATIVE mammogram or breast X-ray does not rule out breast cancer, a leading cancer specialist has told conference delegates.
Prof Niall O'Higgins, head of the department of surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons, said mammograms, although improving in quality, were by no means foolproof. "We have seen many cancers which are not diagnosable on a mammogram," he said.
However, he said, the chances of a cancer not being picked up would be minimised if a patient was seen by a multidisciplinary team, where the mammogram would be backed up with clinical examination of the patient and perhaps an ultrasound or fine needle test. Even then, though, some cancers would be "overlooked".
Prof O'Higgins was responding to a question from Helen Doyle (52), a delegate from Bray, who said she was diagnosed with "stage three breast cancer" in May 2007 after having had a BreastCheck mammogram in September 2006, which was reported as normal.
She had not asked for the mammogram to be reviewed, she said, as she had to concentrate on her treatment, which is ongoing.
"I can't understand how it could have grown from nothing to that size in such a short period of time," she said.
Responding to a question from Dr Juliet McAleese, a Dublin-based anaesthetist in her 40s who was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, the State's director of cancer control Prof Tom Keane said he could not say when BreastCheck might be offered to women under 50 years.
He said while the issue was being reviewed, it would not happen in the next 12 months as the priority was to extend the screening programme to all women aged 50-64 first.
Minister for Health Mary Harney, who opened the conference entitled "Surviving Breast Cancer", said the one thing that could be done in memory of women like Ann Moriarty and Edel Kelly - who died earlier this year after having had breast cancer misdiagnosed or not treated promptly by Ennis General Hospital - was to move as rapidly as possible to having cancers diagnosed only at the eight centres which have been designated for cancer care across the State.
"We have withdrawn breast cancer surgery and diagnosis from 17 different hospitals over the past year and there is still opposition to that . . . but the fact is that it's only when a woman is treated in a designated centre that her outcome improves by up to 25 per cent," she said.
Christine Murphy-Whyte, chairwoman of Europa Donna Ireland, the support group which organised the conference, said the deaths of Ms Moriarty and Ms Kelly showed the urgent need to have fully-resourced specialist breast cancer centres in place.
She appealed to politicians, health professionals and women campaigning for services to be retained in their local areas to get behind the drive to establish and resource specialist centres, which she said would save the lives of 130 breast cancer patients a year.