Dr. Helen Lambkin:

With regard to quality assurance CervicalCheck has a quality assurance document that gives protocols for how smears are examined and checked, what the quality audit is and so on. When an individual medical scientist looks at a smear, which may be 95% pick-up of high grade cells, another medical scientist will be screening that slide also as a second screen. That is the quality procedure as performed in Ireland. If there is a 95% pick-up by the first screen there is a good chance that the second person might pick up one or some of the 5%. This is why there are two people looking at the smear - to hopefully pick that up. There is always human error.

Some individuals who get cervical cancer have a form of cancer called adenocarcinoma as opposed to squamous carcinoma. Adenocarcinoma, generally, is harder to pick up in smears. Sometimes when a person gets a negative smear there may not have been representative cells of that tumour adequately present for it to be identified. The smear is most effective for the identification of cells related to squamous carcinoma.