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 this first 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, despite the call being made to Health Minister Simon Harris.

The decision follows revelations a former locum pathologist at the hospital misdiagnosed the type of cancer Dubliner Alison McCormack had in 2010, finding she had a form known as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), which is not invasive."

[HSE = Health Service Executive in Ireland and provides all of Ireland's public health services in hospitals and communities across the country.]

The hospital released a statement:

"“The review highlighted that identification of subtle foci of invasive carcinoma within in situ carcinoma is a difficult diagnostic area that challenged both the individual pathologist and the wider pathologist group.

“The pathology conclusion is that this error could equally have been made by any other competent pathologist and does not represent incompetency on the part of the individual pathologist or a departmental systems failure.

“On the basis of the contents of the report it is the view of St. James’s Hospital that any further review of the remainder of the pathologist’s work is not warranted."

Um, if its an error that could be made by any pathologist, I am not sure I would want any of their pathologists, looking at my tests. And when the error was discovered, after the patient was rediagnosed, the hospital didn't even rush to tell her and waited until a meeting months later.

St James is a big teaching hospital associated with Trinity University and, I believe, the biggest hospital in Dublin. But if I knew this, I wouldn't go to that hospital unless absolutely necessary and want every test done, redone elsewhere.