This Morning agony aunt Deidre Saunders is set to undergo surgery to remove a ‘high-grade’ carcinoma
(Picture: ITV)This Morning Agony Aunt Deidre Saunders has revealed that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
The 77-year-old - who can regularly be seen giving out advise to viewers on the ITV daytime show - has a “high-grade” carcinoma in her right breast, which she is set to have removed this weekend.
Luckily, the cancer was discovered early, otherwise, it would grow and spread aggressively.
This was almost not the case however as her diagnosis came about after she wasn’t invited for her mammogram at 70 years old “by error”.
Writing in her column for The Sun, Saunders recalled how last summer she started “feeling achy,” realising that the tension she often feels in her shoulders had spread to her right breast.
Two weeks before going on holiday, the TV star called her GP about her concerns before then seeing an advanced nurse practitioner in person.
After undergoing a mammogram and an ultrasound scan, she was booked in for a biopsy for straight after her vacation, discovering that the cells were malignant.
She explained that she had not had a breast screening for nearly 10 years, because she was “among a cohort of several thousand women who, by error, did not get invited for a mammogram when they turned 70”.
While she was offered a screening a few years later, she admitted that she “reckoned I must be too old to need it any more as the NHS stops inviting you for a screening after that age”.
Now, she is urging other women to go and get checked and not miss their breast screening appointments.
According to Cancer Research UK, around a quarter of new breast cancer cases in the UK are diagnosed in people aged 75 and over every year.
The government outlines that when members of the public are 71 or older, they are not automatically invited for breast screenings, despite being more at risk of getting breast cancer than younger women.
They can however request one once every three years by contacting their local breast screening unit for an appointment.
