Cancer Scare Shock Horror

In Manchester a radiologist apparently misread 17 mammograms out of 2500 over a 3 year period ... a failure rate of 0.6%.

Now suspended and vilified, it appears from the spokesman a Dr Campbell that this resulted from disagreements at a regular weekly review meeting. So if failure there was, it was shared and the checks and balances worked imperfectly.

Let us wake up to the fact that such a failure rate in any medical procedure is perfectly acceptable. I am no oncologist although have studied Cervical smear programs in the UK to whom such a failure rate would be understandable. Inadequate smears , damaged or ruined smears in staining account for over 5% of samples requiring a worrying recall.

Mammogram reading is not a perfect or objective matter ( God knows why some automatic reading technology isn't used to support medical decisions) yet the patient is fed the belief that doctors are never wrong. My Blood sugar tester made by Johnson and Johnson has a declared error reading rate of 20% which everyone accepts.

There have been major advances in the UK breast cancer program which resulted from the realisation that wether treatment was chemical, radiological, or surgical depended more upon your specialists training hosital than the evidence he saw.

As a result, we have far better results, use of less intrusive surfery, and widespread use of tamoxifen which was identified (against all expetcations) as the most successful method of treatment for many cancers.

The treatment of this un named and now suspended man (yes it has to be a man) is scandalous.

Why don't medical authorities take more time telling the patient how limited their tools are and spend less time bragging about golden bullets and magic cures ?