Women in Ireland have been waiting up to twice the standard time for their CervicalCheck results since the controversy broke in April.
Some smear tests under CervicalCheck have expired due to such long backlogs in the screening programme, the Irish Times reports.
Patients have faced delays of up to 13 weeks in getting results back, while the standard waiting time is between 6-8 weeks.
The backlog has been attributed to a high increase in women seeking repeat smear tests following the revelations of the CervicalCheck scandal exposed by Limerick woman Vicky Phelan.
CervicalCheck carried out 50% more tests in July 2018 than the previous year as thousands of women sought assurance on their tests.
CervicalCheck have revealed that a number of test samples have expired because they were not processed by labs within the six-week limit. There is a four-fold increase in expired tests compared to July 2017, with 110 tests taken in July 2018 unsuitable for processing. Of the 110 tests, 87 samples had expired because they were not processed in time.
Read more at: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/hundreds-of-cervical-smears-go-out-of-date-1.3611615
