Quebec Must Redo Many Breast Cancer Tests
June 2, 2009 by Marijke Durning, RN
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
If being diagnosed with breast cancer isn’t enough of a nightmare, how would finding out that your breast cancer test results may wrong feel like? That’s what is happening to thousands of women in the Canadian province of Quebec.
A study, done out of the University of Montreal, had concluded that between 15 and 20% of breast cancer tests had been interpreted incorrectly and that many women may have been given the wrong type of treatment based on this erroneous test results.
It is important, however, to understand that just because the tests may have been incorrect, this does *not* mean that all those women would have received the wrong treatment.
There is also some debate as to whether the study is all that strong as it was a relatively small study in terms of research.
Not a First
Sadly, this isn’t the first time Canadian women have faced problems with their breast cancer test results. Earlier this year, women in the province of Newfoundland, Canada’s easternmost province, learned that a few hundred women had received incorrect test results.
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