Cervical Screening: False Negatives and Interval Cancers in Ireland, 1973 - 2007
It's well known hundreds of women were diagnosed with cervical cancer (2008-2015), after normal smears, known as CervicalCheck Scandal. There's a VITAL question media and politicians didn't seem too fussed to ask... "So how many women did this happen to from 1973 - 2007?" Attempting to answer a difficult question. It's vital to ask and (at least try) answer that question. Screening tests have sensitivity (% of true positives identified) and specificity (% of true negatives identified). Given neither can be 100%, there will always be False Negatives (FN) and False Positives (FP). How many got cancer after normal smear results *before* the scandal? In order to ascertain whether the recent scandal, represents an abject failure of the Organized Screening Service , outsourced US Labs etc.. You should maybe want to compare it to the Opportunistic Screening that preceded it. If 300-500 cancers, following normal s...
