Breast cancer screening failure 'shortened' up to 270 lives [single-payer]

Sky News ^ | May 2, 2018 | By Sanya Burgess

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Up to 270 women may have had their "lives shortened" after the NHS failed to invite them to breast screenings, the Health Secretary has said.

Jeremy Hunt made the announcement as he said the government will order an independent review into NHS breast cancer screening after hundreds of thousands of women were not invited for screening.

Some of the women have since developed cancer.

Making a statement to the Commons, Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said there could be 135 and 270 women who "had their lives shortened as a result", adding it was "unlikely to be more than this range and may be considerably less".

"However, tragically there are likely to be some people in this group who would have been alive today if the failure had not happened," he said.

The next of kin of those who missed a scan and subsequently died of breast cancer will be contacted. Advice, including on whether compensation is available, and an apology will be offered.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Free health care.

[House Atreides]

Well, I guess they better dig up the “victims” so they can get their ‘compensation”.

[Pollster1]

It’s still better than the treatment they provided to toddlers. Adult women are not imprisoned and then killed in the NHS hospitals. Not yet.

[a fool in paradise]

In America the age for such screenings for women and men have been raised like 10-15 years.

The masters want people dying (and the estates surrendered to the State for more public welfare).

[econjack]

Around 450,000 women in England were not invited to screenings. Of these, 150,000 have died since and the remaining 300,000 are aged in their 70s.

Again, extremely sloppy journalism. They are trying to make it sound like a third of the women died from breast cancer. The important question is how many of the 150,000 died from breast cancer, but of course, that wasn't on the reporter's agenda, so they didn't bother to report it. Stupid.

[ronniesgal]

My older sister (she’s dead now) actually thought that should happen. No inheritance, all the $$ goes to the government. We were raised in the same house, too. I can’t figure out why she thought that way.

[originalbuckeye]

I complain a lot about the NHS, but this is where I draw the line. I know that screenings are/were (I’m not sure the age, at this point) limited to age 50 and above. My SIL in Britain was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 49. She was angry that she hadn’t had the opportunity for imaging earlier. Especially as she knew that cancer screenings here started at age 40. But a simple notice in the newspapers and on the BBC TV stations should have sufficed to alert women of screenings. That the NHS is going to these ends is a sure sign that some Lefties have found another way to take NHS money away from the NHS. I would never want Socialized Medicine in this country, but this ‘outreach’ from the NHS is ridiculous.

[i_robot73]

Invited?

If they weren’t ‘invited’, but still wished to be screened???

[longfellowsmuse]

To be fair, independent peer reviewed medical studies don’t show clear benefit to mammography despite it’s hype. The latest research shows that mammograms often detect things that aren’t cancer and miss cancers that are actually there. It’s not actually always about money. The problem is especially difficult in premenopausal women because breast tissue is dense when you are young making it very difficult to interpret the films. These same women are unfortunately the ones who have usually inherited the BRCA gene making their cancers more aggressive and more likely to be fatal. It will be very difficult to prove that mammography would have saved these women. The bigger issue is the medical communities continued peddling of hormonal birth control mentors that significantly increase a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer. Yet physicians and mid-level practitioners never mention this risk to patients.. add in binge alcohol use and obesity among young women with the BRCA gene and mammography isn’t going to save you.

[The Great RJ]

Breast cancer survival rates in the UK are much lower than in the US. NHS bean counters have determined that annual mammograms for women over 50 are not “effective” so mammograms are only done every other year or longer. If a possible cancer is detected there are waits to see specialists and the very latest treatments are often not available. The result is that breast cancers are first detected and treated in later stages with poorer results.