The media misinterpreted the results of a breast cancer study by reporting that up to 30 per cent of the 6,000 women in Quebec diagnosed with the disease each year are not receiving the correct treatment, Quebec's minister of health said Sunday.

"The reports are false, completely false," Yves Bolduc told reporters during a news conference in Montreal on Sunday.

The study by Quebec's Association of Pathologists found error rates of 15 to 30 per cent in the detection of hormone and protein receptors critical in the treatment of breast cancer.

Bolduc said it's impossible from that to conclude the same level of diagnostic errors or mistakes occurred in treatment for breast cancer patients

"The experts have concluded that it is not true to say that a variation observed in the results in terms of quality means that there is the same variation in terms of wrong tests or inappropriate treatment," he said.

Louis Gaboury, president of the association that represents the province's pathologists, agreed that his study has been misinterpreted.

"I never said that 30 per cent of the test were wrong," he said. "You can't extrapolate [from the study] that 20 to 30 per cent of women received the wrong treatment."

Bolduc said specialists will be meeting early next week to determine whether there is a need to redo some of the tests. He said he wasn't blaming journalists but maintained that they "said things about the study that were not true."

Bolduc also criticized Dr. Gaeton Barrette, head of the Quebec Association of Medical Specialists, claiming he spread misinformation to meet his own ends.

"He's speaking for a union, he does not represent any professional association of quality" the minister said. "You have to look at his credibility in that context."

Barrette called Bolduc's statements on Sunday "outrageous."

"He said that the test was a good one, a rigorous one, an undebatable one and that the conclusions were right — and after that he says that you cannot extrapolate. Where does he live? Where did he do his medical training?"

With files from The Canadian Press