Overview
- Lab staff at Hospital Clínico in Málaga flagged an unexpected spike in positive faecal occult blood tests and launched an immediate review that identified the problem.
- Officials traced the error to cleaning fluid that contaminated the analyser after a maintenance procedure and to a possible fault in the analyser’s internal fluid system, which produced artificially high readings.
- About 400 test results from people served by Costa del Sol and Guadalhorce health centres were false positives and those individuals are being contacted to repeat the test.
- The Servicio Andaluz de Salud corrected the technical fault, strengthened control procedures and decided to repeat all determinations from the affected period to avoid missed or incorrect diagnoses.
- The incident has raised trust concerns for Andalucía’s screening programmes and prompted El Defensor del Paciente to ask the Málaga prosecutor for a criminal inquiry while health officials stress there were no false negatives.