NHS under fire on digital breast tests
NEW computerised breast screening could save hundreds of lives.
Digital mammography scanners pick up three times more tumours than traditional X-rays, research reveals.
However, Britain is lagging behind other parts of Europe in introducing the technology.
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A study out tomorrow in the European Journal of Radiology has led to calls for the NHS to step up its switch to the latest scanners.
Both France and Germany have more digital scanning machines than the UK and 60 per cent of scanning for breast cancer in the US is by digital scanning.
The breast screening programme in the Irish Republic switched to digital technology last year.
Yet only around 20 per cent of women in the UK have these newer mammograms.
The study by Professor Kefah Mokbel, breast surgeon at London’s St George’s Hospital and the London Breast Institute, looked at more than 14,000 private patients between the ages of 40 and 47 who had regular screening over a seven-year period.
It examined the effectiveness of digital screening.
Professor Mokbel said: “The research clearly showed that your chances of having cancer caught early and treated effectively are raised by having a digital mammogram.
“It is frustrating that we have so few machines available to us. We are not getting this technology quickly enough. We are short of dozens of machines.”
He added: “This is state-of-the-art technology and the longer we delay, the more lives will be lost or put at risk.”
The National Breast Cancer Screening Programme set a target of having at least one digital scanner in every screening unit by this year but inquiries by the Sunday Express have found that the target has not been met with just three months of the year left.
A spokesman confirmed that digital scanners were only available at 58 per cent of the country’s 83 units but was confident the target would be met by the end of the year.
Yet Professor Mokbel said: “Simply having a machine in every centre will not provide a full screening service as two or three or more machines will be required.”
The NHS aims eventually to lower the age limit for screening from 50 to 47. Professor Mokbel said: “The significance of our study is that it is known that standard mammography is less effective in younger women. So if we are going to start scanning younger women we really need to be offering them digital mammography if we are to pick up most cancers in the young age group.”
The cost of a digital mammography scanner is around £200,000, more than twice the cost of an X-ray machine
Professor Mokbel said: “At the current rate of progress we are talking at least several years before all women get digital mammograms and even that might be optimistic.”
