Results 1-20 of 22 for cervical segment:7426632

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

Michael Harty: This morning, the committee is meeting with representatives of the HSE and CervicalCheck to receive an update on the CervicalCheck programme. The committee has expressed a particular interest in hearing about the proposed introduction of HPV testing for cervical screening and in discussing delayed smear reporting. On behalf of the committee, I welcome Mr. Damien McCallion, national director...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

...the committee. I thank the committee for the invitation to attend this meeting. I am joined by my colleagues, Dr. Colm Henry, chief clinical officer, HSE, Dr. Lorraine Doherty, clinical director, CervicalCheck, and Ms Michele Tait, implementation lead for the Scally report, HSE. The HSE remains extremely conscious of women’s concerns regarding cervical screening over the past...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

Dr. Lorraine Doherty: I thank the Deputy for his question. As he knows I have recently arrived in the CervicalCheck service. I was not involved in the decision-making on this at the time. Nevertheless, at the time we were dealing with a very difficult situation concerning confidence in the programme and anxiety among the population of women in Ireland, who were concerned about the result...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

...and support to us on how to deal with many of the issues we face in it. The other element is the infrastructure. We have made an initial allocation of funding for the development of a national cervical screening laboratory and we are going through the design process. While I do not have a detailed plan, we are using the fast-track modular build model to get there as quickly as we can...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

.... As she is aware, I was not involved in the service at that time. I am not aware of what information GPs were sharing at that time regarding the demand for services. The decision to undertake a cervical smear is between the GP or other doctor and his or her patient. It is a decision that is taken in a clinical consultation context and it is a clinical decision. What informs that...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

Kate O'Connell: Australia aims to eradicate cervical cancer in ten years.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

...public system in the Coombe. We aim to build that up to give greater resilience within the programme. Funding has been allocated on the capital programme to advance the development of a national cervical screening laboratory in the Coombe. We have a steering group in place with the Coombe, a joint group, and a project team and we are working on the designs for that. We are also working...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

Dr. Colm Henry: The main clinical risk is that of anxiety from waiting. Cervical cancer happens to be very slow growing. In many cases, it takes ten to 15 years to develop. My colleague, Dr. McKenna, gave evidence at another hearing and he described the exceedingly low chance, although not negligible, that harm would result as a consequence of the delay and that the intervention would...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

...to undergo a test that might pick up a problem. When a person has symptoms it is not relevant to the screening programme. We have three cancer screening programmes, namely, breast, bowel and cervical cancer screening, and in each of those people who develop symptoms, whether rectal bleeding or vaginal bleeding, they enter a clinical pathway that brings them to an urgent referral to a...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

Michael Harty: .... It brings its own challenges, changes and referral pathways, but it is nevertheless a goal we are trying to reach. In the interests of stabilising the situation, is there a possibility that the cervical screening programme will not be suspended but rather the routine screening will be suspended for a number of months? Those who are in colposcopy would continue to be screened, as...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

Mr. Damien McCallion: The RCOG will produce the overall report on the laboratories, not only on the 221 women who were affected initially and their families but also on all of the cervical cases in which women consented, of whom there are over 1,000. On the report to which the Deputy refers, we have completed a report which simply outlines a profile of the laboratories, with an explanation....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

Mr. Damien McCallion: In fairness, one must acknowledge that Dr. Gráinne Flannelly has done considerable and phenomenal work in cervical cancer screening during the years. She started the programme. Dr. Peter McKenna kindly stepped in to fill the role of clinical director, even with his other roles, for the intervening period. Dr. Doherty has now moved into the role. Of course, in...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

...of times. We are not in a position where we can add anything. We can explain the context in terms of the difficult circumstances faced at the time by GPs and women. To illustrate them, our cervical helpline would typically have handled a couple of hundred calls in a week. It jumped to thousands at the time, which created its own challenges, as the Deputy may recall, in responding to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

...programme. To be blunt about it, if someone shows symptoms corresponding to any of the three screening programmes, such as bowel symptoms, a breast lump or vaginal bleeding in the case of cervical cancer, the screening programme has no relevance to him or her. Such people must go straight to their GP. We have urgent access pathways for these patients, which we measure and report on...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

Kate O'Connell: ...the answer. I do not follow Twitter in the sense that it is not where I get my official press releases. Anyway, the chief medical officer made a press statement stating any woman who had had a cervical smear test should have a further test as part of a reassurance measure provided the GP took the view that she required it. Moreover, the Minister asked CervicalCheck to make arrangements,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

Kate O'Connell: Can she elaborate on that? We are in cervical screening and are transitioning to HPV. If there is HPV reflex going on, would it be fair to say that we are in a transition period? I thought it was a move from "A" to "B" but it is really a transition.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

Dr. Lorraine Doherty: What I mean by reflex testing is that under our current system of cervical screening, a woman has a smear taken upon which the first test is cytology. If there is any indication of any abnormality on her smear, she has a reflex HPV test. This test is to identify oncogenic types of HPV, particularly type 16 and 18, which are responsible for 70% of all cervical cancers....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

Kate O'Connell: ...we can eat into that backlog. That is a major concern for us because, again, there have been a couple of comments that it could take ten years or so to get through this. If the progression of cervical cancer is three, six, and nine years that is then sending a message out of this committee that is incorrect, which will feed the scaremongering and the anxiety related to this issue. ...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

Bríd Smith: ...the internal audit was shut down and that, since then, between 250 and 300 women who were excluded from the group of 221 women who were affected initially - the 221 group - have been diagnosed with cervical cancer? In other words, these women's cases have not been audited and the women have not been given access to the care package which members of the 221 group received, yet it is likely...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: CervicalCheck Screening Programme Update: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Apr 2019)

...the programmes. We sought the best international advice and the best expert advice available here in Ireland as to how we should deal with interval cancers, whether in respect of breast, bowel or cervical cancer. That working is ongoing. It is led by Professor Susan O'Reilly who previously headed the national cancer control programme, NCCP. We hope to see the outcome of that work in...