Members of the 150-strong Pink Justice Network will attend a County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust meeting where the board will decide how far back its breast cancer review should go.
Hundreds of patients have already been found to have been harmed by the Trust’s breast service.
Of 514 cases reviewed, 315 patients were harmed, including 77 who suffered significant harm.
At least 20 women underwent unnecessary mastectomies, and one patient is known to have died.
University Hospital of North Durham in Durham City (Image: Chris Booth)
The current review covers patients treated between January 2023 and February 2025, but trust papers admit there are “likely more cases of harm” outside that period.
Board members will decide whether to extend the investigation back to 2015, when documents say systemic failings first became evident.
The trust wants to finish the current review, then work backwards year by year towards 2015, deciding after each year whether to continue.
The North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board favours extending the review straight back to 2015.
The widest review could cover around 4,500 patients and take about five years.
The lookback Exercise has already cost the Trust more than £500,000 during the current financial year.
Pink Justice Network members, who support women treated by the Trust, will attend the meeting at Prospect House in Durham.
County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust (Image: NORTHERN ECHO)
Nadeen Lister, who runs the group with Amelia Green, said members were still calling for a public inquiry.
She said: “When we started the group, nobody was talking about compensation; they just wanted justice for what has been done.”
Mrs Green said the Trust could avoid the cost of continuing the review “by backing our call for a public inquiry“.
The group now has around 150 members.
Rachel was diagnosed with breast cancer aged 37 in January 2022 and treated under the care of Amir Bhatti, then clinical lead for breast surgery.
She says she was told a mastectomy was her only surgical option.
Independent reviewers told her she should have been offered therapeutic mammoplasty, breast-conserving surgery that removes the cancer while reshaping the breast.
Rachel Gray (Image: SUBMIT)
Concerns about CDDFT’s breast services date back more than a decade.
In 2018, the Northern Cancer Alliance branded the Trust a regional and national outlier for high re-excision and benign-excision rates, while the Care Quality Commission raised concerns about delayed diagnoses and serious incidents.
In 2019, NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time programme identified the Trust as a negative outlier for high mastectomy and re-excision rates and low rates of immediate reconstruction.
Further concerns followed, and a 2023 external review found around a third of the breast-surgery cases examined fell into its highest-concern category.
The Trust’s re-excision rate was 30 per cent, twice the regional average.
The Royal College of Surgeons later found “significant problems” in breast surgery and called for immediate external support.
The Trust has acknowledged there were opportunities to act sooner.
Amir Bhatti (Image: SUBMIT)
Board papers state: “We recognise and acknowledge that there were opportunities to consider and commence duty of candour processes earlier than happened in 2025.”
The papers say 283 patients would have been missed by the Trust’s original data and criteria. They were identified through the patient helpline, complaints, other hospitals or the current breast team.
The Trust said it “must identify and contact affected individuals rather than relying on patients to come forward”, adding: “Responsibility should not fall on patients.”
By September 2, the Trust’s dedicated helpline had received 642 calls and emails.
Hayley Collinson of Hudgell Solicitors, which represents several affected patients, said the scale of harm meant the review should be extended.
She said: “Given the scale of harm revealed so far, we can’t see how the Trust board can come to any other decision than to extend this lookback investigation.”
She said women treated by the Trust since 2015 were likely to be questioning whether their care was appropriate.
Durham Police, supported by the National Crime Agency, is investigating the failures to establish whether criminal offences were committed.
Mr Bhatti, clinical lead for breast services from 2013 to 2024, has restricted his clinical practice while the Trust’s internal investigation continues.
The Trust has apologised, saying: “We acknowledge that, during the period under review, the standards our patients had a right to expect were not consistently met and that failures in care, governance and oversight caused distress, uncertainty and harm for some patients and their families.”
The Trust said it remained “deeply sorry” and was committed to learning from what happened.
The board will meet at Prospect House in Durham on Thursday to decide how far the review should go.