MISTAKES BY a number of radiologists were uncovered during a review of the work of one locum consultant in the northeast last year, it has emerged.
Minutes of meetings of the steering group which conducted the review of the work of Scottish locum consultant radiologist Dr James Murray show errors by other radiologists were also found, including one where a doctor missed the same cancerous lesion on five occasions.
Details of these errors were not included in the final report published by the Health Service Executive (HSE) last November into the work of Dr Murray, which found nine patients in the northeast had their diagnosis of lung cancer delayed by periods ranging from five weeks to 14 months.
Dr Murray had worked at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda and Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan from August 2006 to August 2007.
He was reported to the Medical Council after the review was published.
The minutes of the meetings, released under the Freedom of Information Act to irishhealth. com and Louth Sinn Féin councillor Thomas Sharkey, refer to mistakes by other doctors in some of the nine patients whose cancer diagnosis was delayed but these details were not included in their final report because these doctors were outside its terms of reference.
However, Mr Sharkey, a European election candidate, said yesterday the HSE should not have used the terms of reference of the review to avoid inquiring into the others who had missed cancers.
A HSE spokeswoman indicated the errors made by the others were not on such a scale as to merit them being reported to the council.
She said the review published indicated international studies suggested the incidence of discrepancies and errors in general radiology practice can be expected to range between 2 and 20 per cent.
She insisted all errors found were followed up and communicated with the families of the nine patients who had been misdiagnosed. Eight of the nine misdiagnosed patients have died.
The HSE would not disclose how many other doctors’ errors had been found during the review.