Name: Women 'traumatised' by breast cancer treatment at NHS trust | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-11-28T16:54:02.000Z
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A BBC investigation into breast cancer care provided by Durham and Darlington NHS Trust has Learned more than 200 patients have been harmed, including 43 who suffered significant harm.

Reports into the Trust have highlighted problems including missed cancers and mastectomies that may not have been necessary.

Our health correspondent Sharon Barber has the story.

In 2023, Kate Driver found a lump in breast.

Her GP referred her for urgent investigations to an NHS two week wait breast clinic.

I thought I was going to die, really like the hardest bit, I think kind of just being faced with your own mortality.

Kate didn't know that the initial test that she had at the clinic was outdated and can cause delays in diagnosis.

Her diagnosis was delayed for two months.

Waiting so long and having to chase everything up made it a hundred times worse than it needed to be.

It just made it felt like no one really cared.

She moved her care to another trust and says she had a lucky escape.

Kate is one of hundreds of patients who have suffered.

The medical records of nearly 1,600 patients are being examined.

So far, more than 200 women have been found to have been harmed.

Harms include mastectomies that may not have been needed, cancers that were missed and delays in diagnosis.

The BBC's also learned that multiple warnings of serious problems had been raised for more than a decade.

Steve Russell started as the new Chief executive at the Trust in September.

Had action been taken more swiftly, women may not have come to the same degree of harm as they have done.

It is not good enough that we were too slow to act on the information that was there.

I can only imagine the distress, the anger, the loss of trust that women will feel in the NHS and in our organisation.

And I'm determined to make changes so that that doesn't happen again.

The Trust has apologised to Kate for failures in her care.

This must be a huge shock for the patients of the trust, not least because of the numbers involved, which are extraordinary.

Yes, Sarah, and I think this is only the beginning.

So of those near 1600 patient cases that are being investigated, that only goes back to 2023.

Our investigation has found that problems, really significant problems for women at this trust go back as early as 2012 and since then there have been multiple reports and reviews and warnings to the Trust.

It's come under increasing scrutiny, scrutiny about the standard of the Breast cancer care and treatment.

It's been offering patients problems like low high mastectomy rates and low rates of rebuilding the breast reconstruction, all sorts of problems, missing cancers.

So in 2019, a report was sent to the Trust warning of problems.

The real problem here is that the Trust didn't act on that.

They knew about it, they didn't act on that, they didn't do anything.

Earlier this summer, we did a report from.

We did another report that came through from the Royal College of Surgeons that again listed multiple, multiple serious problems.

Before that, there was the Northern Cancer Reliance report into the Trust, but

And as we heard there from Steve Russell, the chief executive, he apologises and said had they taken action, that the women wouldn't have come to the same levels of harm as they have.

And obviously he has apologized, he's the new chief executive, as you say.

But the Trust have admitted apologized for being too slow to act, but

that can't be much solace for the hundreds of women that have been involved in this over years.

Well, the truss has effectively been taken over.

A number of senior managers have been moved on or clinical leaders have been changed.

The whole way that the breast cancer care was being operated has changed dramatically.

So what we've also discovered is that the clinical lead, the lead breast surgeon from the Trust at the time, was also contracted out to run private clinics on behalf of the Trust.

These were out of hours clinics that ran till very late at night, sometimes 11:30pm appointments.

And what was really interesting and unusual about this trust was that that surgeon was being paid per patient or per appointment.

And through Freedom of Information request, we found out that companies that he was involved with, the clinics that he ran, were paid nearly £6 million in the last six years alone.

So there are allegations and the Trust has accepted conflicts of interest elements here.

The women, yes, it's really very difficult for them because if your cancer was missed, and

we've spoken to so many women, if your cancer was missed and it spread, or if you had a mastectomy that you didn't need, it's too late, isn't it?

And these women are traumatized, they're devastated.

Another really important piece of this story is the lack of compassion and care that they felt.

So many women we have spoken to are so traumatized, not only to learn that they perhaps didn't need the surgery that they had, or perhaps their cancer was missed, but

it was the attitude shown to them by some staff that left them feeling really devastated and, yeah, angry.