The health service is "failing miserably" to meet recommended assessment times for women routinely referred by family doctors to hospital symptomatic breast services, a senior Health Service Executive (HSE) manager has said.
Separately, it has emerged that the final results of the retesting of six women, whose diagnosis from Portlaoise hospital have been questioned, may not now be available for a number of weeks.
Dr Mary Hynes, assistant director of the HSE's National Hospitals Office told the annual scientific meeting of the Irish College of General Practitioners at the weekend that guidelines for the routine referral of women with breast problems were not being met. The guidelines state that such women be seen within 12 weeks of referral to hospital by a GP.
"We are failing miserably on this in large tracts of the country at present," Dr Hynes said. However, she added that she was confident that the stipulation that urgent referrals be seen in less than two weeks was being met, as was the six week cut-off for early referrals of women with less suspicious symptoms.
Dr Hynes defined urgent referrals as women over the age of 35 with a discrete lump in the breast; a patient with clinical signs highly suggestive of breast cancer; and women of any age whose GP had decided had a "high likelihood of cancer".
In addition women with an acute breast abscess must be referred to hospital immediately.
With 2,000 new cases of breast cancer in the Republic each year and with a requirement that every specialist breast surgeon perform at least 50 operations annually to ensure a better outcome for patients , there is a need for about 40 consultant breast surgeons in the State, she said.
Explaining the advantages of specialist breast units with minimum staffing levels as outlined in the recently published national cancer control plan, she said such a system benefited patients because it facilitated the "collective wisdom " of surgeons, radiologists, pathologists and other experts.
"If someone is having an off-day, you are more likely to have this picked up using a multidisciplinary model of care," Dr Hynes said.
A new cancer supremo, Prof Tom Keane, an Irish radiation oncologist with the British Columbia Cancer Agency, begins work today as interim director of the National Cancer Control Programme.
Meanwhile, The Irish Times understands that the final outcome of the detailed medical assessment of six women with symptoms of breast cancer, whose original diagnosis at the Midlands Hospital in Portlaoise have been questioned, will not be available this week.
Initially expected to be released last Friday following comments by the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, it is believed the publication of the results may now be some weeks away.
Some 3,000 mammograms carried out between November 2003 and August 2007 at Portlaoise were sent for independent review. To date, it has emerged that eight women were given the all-clear, when in fact they had breast cancer.