A review of breast-cancer testing in Quebec found that 39 women did not receive proper treatment, but Health Minister Yves Bolduc says error rates are still lower than in most jurisdictions.

Bolduc released a report Wednesday that says erroneous cancer treatments were significantly less common than what was suggested in a report by Quebec pathologists in May. The pathologists' report prompted Bolduc to order a sweeping review back in June.

He told a news conference that the review found error rates of between 0.6 per cent and 6.2 per cent from among 2,856 cancer tests that were re-done by a lab in Seattle.

That's far below the botch rate of 15 per cent to 30 per cent indicated in a report released in May by the Quebec Association of Pathologists.

"It's impossible that the tests would be perfect," Bolduc said in Quebec City.

"(But) if we compare (the results) to other areas in the world, where false-negative rates of 20 per cent have been reported, the results are excellent."

Exaggeration?

Dr. Andre Robidoux, a surgeon with the University of Montreal Health Centre who oversaw the provincial review, said the earlier study exaggerated the rate of treatment errors.

"The sample size was different," he said.

"The doctors' study was 15 tumours, this is a 2,800-patient study, and the type of tumour that was submitted also is different. So we cannot compare the two studies."

Contradictions

The original study by Dr. Louis Gaboury, head of the Quebec Association of Pathologists, examined almost 3,000 breast-cancer tests conducted over 14 months starting in April 2008.

It suggested that flawed breast cancer tests may have resulted in hundreds of women receiving the wrong cancer treatments.

Dr. Gaetan Barrette, president of the Quebec Federation of Medical Specialists, said at the time that the errors were due to poor quality control resulting from chronic under-funding and staff shortages.

Changes

Quebec has since ordered all cancer-testing labs to have external quality controls.

The province is also working on a system that will reduce the variance among tissue samples. This is aimed at giving pathologists a better understanding of what the samples really show so that treating physicians can provide the best possible care.

Lawsuit

Concerns over botched tests could still land the province in court.

This past summer, a Montreal woman asked a judge for permission to sue Quebec over errors in breast cancer testing.

The woman, who has breast cancer, says the government has known about problems in pathology departments since 2007.

The lawyer in the case says more than 2,000 Quebec women don't know if they're receiving the correct treatment.