Dozens of Manitoba cancer patients
found out their diagnoses were wrong, after a review of thousands of cases.
Diagnostic
Services Manitoba released the final results Friday of a review of the work of
one particular pathologist whose work fell under suspicion.
DSM says of the 3006 diagnoses studied, 137 cases showed a “discrepancy” that required follow
up care by the patient’s doctor.
Of those, the agency says five were
considered “critical incidents” where patients required a major change in their
treatment or prognosis. Three of those were patients who knew they had cancer,
but later had to be told the prognosis was worse than first thought and they
would need additional treatment. In two cases, patients thought they were
cancer-free, only to be told they had “early cancer.”
In the other 132 cases DSM says the
effect on the patients’ prognosis was minor.
The problems with the pathologist’s
work were first uncovered last June in a routine audit. It identified potential
issues with results from “a pathologist who had been recruited from the United States.
This pathologist is no longer employed by DSM,” the agency said in a news
release Friday.
Officials say the patients suffered
a variety of different cancers but wouldn’t identify which ones. Officials say
all those with “discrepancies” are now receiving proper treatment and all have
survived. But one DSM official acknowledged some had been “horrified” to
discover they had been misdiagnosed.
“We have learned a great deal from
this experience and are committed to strengthening our policies and procedures.
In fact, we learned that our internal quality assurance programs that first
identified the issue are paramount to our operations and will assist us to
avoid such an incident from occurring in the future. Our priority will always
be patient safety,” said DSM CEO Jim Slater.
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