NEW research has shown that Ireland’s cervical cancer screening programme has prevented more than 5500 cases of the disease.
The figure was revealed through a study undertaken by researchers at Trinity College Dublin (TCD).
The research team found that the Irish Cervical Cancer Screening programme has “prevented over 5500 cancers in Ireland, that would otherwise have occurred in the lifetime of women screened”.
“The outcomes figured by the team give a solid support for the clear efficacy of cervical cancer screening in Ireland and beyond,” a TCD spokesperson said.
The study was published in the journal European Journal of Public Health this month.
Ireland’s CervicalCheck screening programme was introduced in 2008.
“One of the ironies of successful public health interventions is that, when they work well, their benefits are often invisible: with cervical screening and HPV vaccination, we do not see the cancers that are prevented,” the spokesperson said.
“While we cannot directly count events that never happened, mathematical modelling allows us to estimate their impact.”
David Robert Grimes, co-lead author of the research and Assistant Professor in Biostatistics, Institute of Population Health at TCD’s School of Medicine, said:
“We can’t measure things that did not happen, but we can apply mathematical modelling to see what would likely have transpired if screening did not exist.
“This allows us to quantify the benefits of screening in general, and apply that model to the Irish population.”
He added: “To answer the question of how many life-time cancers screening prevent, we have to ask a counterfactual question: if there was no screening, how would things have turned out for women with cervical abnormalities?
“This is a dark “what-if”, but using mathematical techniques and understanding the progression of HPV infection to cervical abnormalities to cancer, we can answer this question both in the abstract, and then apply it to specific data.”
The major finding of the research is that cervical cancer screening in Ireland prevented over 5500 lifetime cervical cancers between 2008 and 2022 alone, by detecting issues that would in time have likely become cancer.
The team also found that while cervical cancer rates were climbing in Ireland from 1994, they now appear to be falling even as the Irish population increases.
“Public health interventions like screening and vaccination are too often victims of their own success, because when they work their victories are largely invisible,” Ass Prof Grimes added.
“This new analysis illuminates the reality that cervical screening is highly effective to preventing cancers, and underscores the clear importance and effectiveness of the Irish national programme.”