Minister for Health Mary Harney has confirmed she will seek advice on whether there should now be reviews of mammograms carried out at other hospitals where patients were not subject to triple assessment.
Her comments follow a review of mammograms at the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise, which found that at least seven women given the all-clear actually had breast cancer.
One of the women was due to undergo surgery at Dublin's St Vincent's hospital yesterday.
Overall, 3,000 mammograms were reviewed at Portlaoise after questions were raised about one doctor's reading of the scans. The consultant has been sent on leave.
Nineteen women whose files were reviewed are still waiting for results of further tests to see if they were correctly given the all-clear. One of them, Margaret Murray from Tullamore, is due to have tests at St Vincent's hospital in Dublin this morning. She has been unable to attend for further tests up to this.
Ms Harney told reporters in Dublin yesterday one could not guarantee a high-quality service for breast cancer patients unless a system was in place for triple assessment of their cases, as will be in place under eight centres of excellence due to be in place by the end of 2009. With triple assessment, cases are assessed jointly by a radiographer, surgeon and pathologist.
Such a service had not been in place in Portlaoise, Ms Harney said. Her heart went out to the women who had now received a delayed breast cancer diagnosis.
Asked if there would therefore be reviews carried out of the diagnosis given to breast cancer patients at other hospitals that had a similar system in place as Portlaoise, Ms Harney said: "I don't want to say something today that may frighten a whole host of women. I think the vast vast majority of people that have had mammograms can be assured that those mammograms were accurate. I want to take advice in relation to those matters."
She added that in Portlaoise, another doctor, breast surgeon Dr Peter Naughton, had raised concerns about what was happening. "I'm not certain that those circumstances exist anywhere else, but as far as I'm concerned if we need to look at mammograms anywhere else, that will happen."
Ms Harney also said that even in the best healthcare systems in the world, mistakes were made.
"We've got to distinguish between genuine mistakes that happen for whatever reason and what's happened here in Portlaoise. What's happened here in Portlaoise is in a different category, given the scale of what has happened. We know that and I don't want to say anything today that could prejudice legal proceedings or a medical council inquiry, for example.
"All of these bodies will have to be involved in the outcome of what's occurred in Portlaoise because I think it's a very serious situation for patients and particularly for the women affected."
Amid calls for an independent inquiry from Fine Gael and Labour, she said she would have to await the findings of the review of the Portlaoise mammograms, led by Dr Ann O'Doherty of BreastCheck, which will be available before the end of this month.
Prof Niall O'Higgins, former president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said mammograms could falsely give an all-clear result, but it would be extremely unlikely that people could slip though the net if they were seen by a multidisciplinary team.
He described what happened in Portlaoise as a systems failure and pointed out that there had been an inordinate delay in designating centres of excellence for breast cancer care, first recommended in 2000.