Many breast cancer patients in Quebec say they're relieved following the release of a government report that suggests erroneous cancer treatments were significantly less common than first believed.
A report released in May by the Quebec Association of Pathologists suggested that between 15 and 30 percent of Quebec women with breast cancer did not receive proper treatment.
The report scandalized breast cancer patients and the medical community, and prompted Quebec Health minister Yves Bolduc to order a large-scale review of the findings.
A lab in Seattle re-evaluated 2,856 cancer tests.
In a new report released Wednesday, the error rate was found to be well below what Bolduc described as "the 10-per-cent norm" for such screening.
Catherine Rideout, who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer last February, told CTV Montreal reporter Caroline van Vlaardingen she's been anxiously awaiting for the results of the report for months.
"I was terribly concerned that I might be on the wrong set of treatment," she said.
"When I found out that my original pathology was correct, it was a huge relief."
Despite the new report, the Quebec Federation of Medical Specialists still believes the margin of error for detection of cancer in Quebec is too high.
The group, which includes oncologists and pathologists, says the allowable level of false positives is at 10 percent, when technology can reduce that number to one percent.
The federation also notes that five of the women whose samples were re-tested have since died.
