What If The Pathologist Is Wrong?

And they won ' t review all the tests. This is a two part misadventure.First I was horrified by thisfirst story where two women were found to have been misdiagnosed by a pathologist at a hospital in Ireland. Their original breast cancer diagnoses were incorrect. One woman was diagnosed with DCIS in 2010 and had a mastectomy. Based on the original pathology she was not required to have any additional treatment. In 2012, to the surprise of her and her doctor, her cancer came back." Her original 2010 biopsy had shown invasive cancer but this had been missed.The hospital said this was a mistake that any pathologist could have made and a review of 39 of the specialist ' s cases from 2010 was conducted.The review found that of nine DCIS cases Alison and another woman were misdiagnosed. "It is nice to know what they did review some of the test results to find the ten cases. But wouldn ' t you think those ten cases were the proverbial smoking gun and want to review more cases, not just the ones from 2010? They only made errors during one year?No, apparently not.Although it was recommended to review all the pathologist ' s breast cancer cases,the hospital decided it was not needed." A review of the breast cancer test results for around 270 patients has been ruled out despite the doctor involved in their care misdiagnosing two other women with the disease.St James ' s Hospital, in Dublin, which has the country ' s largest cancer centre, has refused to investigate the tests of the women...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer treatment cancer diagnosis medical errors pathology report Source Type: blogs