By CATHERINE MASTERS
A Coromandel Peninsula woman was staggered to be contacted by National Women's Hospital in Auckland to see if she needed follow-up treatment for smear tests taken almost two decades ago.
The woman, who did not want to be named, said staff indicated they were calling to make sure she
was alive and well and must have gone to extraordinary lengths to find her.
The hospital's manager, Gary Henry, said the "out of the blue" contact was nothing to worry about and was definitely not connected to the Gisborne inquiry into the misreading of cervical smears.
The woman was one of several hundred who had abnormal smear results between 1981 and 1988.
The hospital is still contacting this group as part of a study that resulted from recommendations of the Cartwright Inquiry into cervical cancer treatment at National Women's.
All women with confirmed abnormalities were followed up during the inquiry.
But Mr Henry said the inquiry also recommended that women such as the one from the Coromandel Peninsula, who did not have cancer but had shown abnormal cells, be contacted to make sure they were having regular checks and receiving appropriate advice.
The records of almost 2000 women had been checked and the result showed that 1015 women had received adequate follow-up treatment or advice, said Mr Henry.
"That left us with 834, and of those we have now contacted 558."
The study had taken a long time because it had originally been decided to review only a sample of women.
Several years ago, however, the hospital had decided to review all cases of abnormal smears from those years.
The woman from the Coromandel Peninsula said that in the intervening years she had moved and changed her name, and had received treatment for the atypical cells picked up in her smear of nearly 20 years ago.
She had become worried that the contact all these years later might have been connected to the Gisborne inquiry, and was relieved to know the check was routine - albeit somewhat belated.
