This week’s blog post looks into an NHS inquiry over patients dying following misdiagnoses of their illnesses in Bristol hospitals.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7575095/Inquiry-into-fears-of-botched-cancer-diagnoses.html

An investigation has revealed that four doctors from different hospitals in the city spoke of their concerns at the blunders being made. One of the cases involved a senior NHS manager who died three years after an NHS biopsy failed to detect breast cancer. It was also established that other serious errors had led to the death of a child, while others received treatment for the wrong disease, received a diagnosis very late or were given needless toxic treatment.

The blunders related principally to four main areas of pathology, serving lung, gynaecology, breast and dermatology patients as well as the diagnoses of children. The inquiry is due to report later this year.

The report quotes Dr Richard Spicer, a paediatric cardiac surgeon who retired from University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust (UHB). He said that too many tests to detect diseases in children were being carried out by pathologists who did not have the necessary paediatric expertise and experience and that as a result children were being diagnosed with the wrong grade of cancer which led to complications with their treatment.