Hospital chiefs in County Durham have agreed to review up to a further 4,500 breast cancer cases after failings including delayed diagnoses and unnecessary surgeries were found.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of patients suffered harm under County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, according to a review of cases dating back to 2023.<\/p>\n
The BBC previously investigated the failings<\/a> and has spoken to multiple women affected<\/a>, including one who said she felt “mutilated” and the trust’s mistakes were “absolutely unforgivable”.<\/p>\n Ahead of agreeing to expand the review to cases dating back to 2015, members of the trust’s board offered “sincere” apologies for the failings and harm caused.<\/p>\n At an extraordinary meeting of the board held in Durham, board chair Alison Marshall said: “I would like to offer a sincere apology to all the women and their families who have been affected by the failings in our breast services.<\/p>\n “I can’t imagine the impact that has had.”<\/p>\n She said they could “not turn back the clock” but would be “open, honest and transparent” about the failings.<\/p>\n Chief nurse Gill Hunt told the board concerns were first raised in 2015 after a “service reconfiguration” and loss of breast surgical trainee posts.<\/p>\n Over the following years patients and bodies such as the Northern Cancer Alliance, Care Quality Commission and NHS England raised multiple issues, she said.<\/p>\n The key “themes” included treatment “not aligned to best practice”, excessive surgery and delayed diagnosis, she said.<\/p>\n The trust’s breast surgery lookback review began in April 2025 by examining cases between January 2023 and February 2025.<\/p>\n Hunt said 538 cases had been reviewed so far with 321 having experienced some form of harm, including one death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hospital chiefs in County Durham have agreed to review up to a further 4,500 breast cancer cases after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":781027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-781026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}