Acronyms –
RCOG Report – Report resulting from the Independent Expert Panel Review of Cervical Screening commissioned by the Irish Minister for Health and carried out by Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) with expertise also sourced through the British Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology.
NSS – National Screening Service – Ireland’s public Screening programmes – includes BreastCheck, CervicalCheck, BowelScreen and Diabetic Retina Screen.
CervicalCheck – Ireland’s public cervical screening programme
HSE – Health Service Executive, Ireland’s state health provision service
NCRI – National Cancer Registry Ireland
NCCP – National Cancer Control Programme
NHS – National Health Service, in the UK
HIQA – Health Information and Quality Authority
Medical Terms
Many thanks to Dr. Scally for the use of the Glossary from the Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Screening Programme, Dr Gabriel Scally, Final Report, September 2018: ix. You can find the Scally report here.
Asymptomatic – Where a disease is present but the patient has no symptoms
CIN – Cervical intra-epithelial neoplasia
Colposcopy – A detailed examination of the cervix using a colposcope
Cytology – The microscopic examination of cells
Cytopathology – The diagnostic technique that examines cells to determine the
cause or nature of the disease
False negative – Samples where the test is originally reported as negative but on
review abnormal cells are found
False positive – Samples where the test is reported as abnormal but the disease is
not present
Histology – The study of the microscopic structure of tissues
HPV – Human papillomavirus, which can cause cervical and other cancers
Interval cancer – A cancer that is diagnosed clinically in the interval between
screening tests
TBS – The Bethesda System: a system of classification of cervical
cytology abnormalities
TIS – ThinPrep Imaging System – a computer assisted microscopy
system for identifying abnormal cells on cervical cytology slides
True negative – Samples which genuinely have no abnormal cells on them, despite
the presence of disease
True positive – Samples where genuine disease is detected
People
Professor Brian McCraith – conducted an independent and rapid review of delays in issuing cervical screening HPV retest results to a large cohort of women and their General Practitioners.
Dr. Gabriel Scally – public health official commissioned by the Irish Department of Health to undertake a scoping inquiry and subsequent reviews of CervicalCheck/ the cervical screening programme in Ireland.
Vicky Phelan – first public campaigner to break the scandal when she refused a non-disclosure agreement and settled her case in the courts. Please read more about Vicky on our dedicated page here.
Lorraine Walsh, Stephen Teap, Lyn Fenton, Rosie Condra – 221+ Steering Group members and public campaigners for better cervical screening in Ireland. Read more about them on ‘Our People’ page.
Justice Meenan – High Court Judge who proposed the CervicalCheck Tribunal
For a list of Staff and Steering Group members please go to ‘Our People’ page.