A LOCUM consultant pathologist who was at the centre of controversy in 2007 after wrongly reporting a woman’s breast biopsy as benign, when in fact it was malignant, faced two charges of professional misconduct before a Medical Council fitness to practise hearing yesterday.
Dr Antoine Geagea (59), who was employed as a locum at University College Hospital Galway (UCHG) from September 4th, 2006, to March 30th, 2007, wanted the inquiry to be held in private, but did not appear at the hearing, nor was he represented.
However, in letters to the council from Finland, he said he wished it to be held in private to avoid “misinterpretation by the media”. The fitness to practise committee did not accede to his request.
Earlier the committee heard that the woman, whose breast cancer was misdiagnosed by Dr Geagea and another pathologist on two separate occasions at the UCHG laboratory in September 2005 and in March 2007, wished the inquiry to be in public so she could hear the evidence.
The misdiagnosis of this woman who attended Barrington’s private hospital in Limerick, which in turn sent her biopsies to UCHG, sparked a review of pathology services at the Galway hospital by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa). It found 50 errors in a review of Dr Geagea’s work and said this error rate of 6.5 per cent was higher than acceptable.
Hiqa made a complaint about Dr Geagea to the Medical Council. It did not complain about the second doctor in Galway who misread the woman’s biopsy in 2005 as he had not made other errors.
The misdiagnosed woman, being referred to only as Ms A, was in the public gallery for yesterday’s hearing.
JP McDowell, representing the chief executive of the Medical Council, told the inquiry it was only when a third biopsy from the woman was sent by Barrington’s to the Bon Secours hospital in Cork later in March 2007 that the errors made in reading her earlier biopsies in Galway came to light.
He said that when Dr Geagea was asked to respond to the complaint about him made to the council, he had replied in a letter that he was taken on in Galway to work on gynaecological cytology but he also had to interpret non-gynaecological cytology.
He said there was no feedback provided, many slides were suboptimal, that reports on slides were written by junior doctors and he had to sign off on them without having the slides beside him when doing so, and that he believed his error rate was lower than cited in the Hiqa report. He also said that when he left Galway for a job in Cork University Hospital he got “a glowing reference” from Dr John Callaghan in Galway.
He added in his letter that what happened had catastrophic consequences for his professional career and that he had to resign. He felt he had been more fiercely attacked than he deserved.
Dr Callaghan, who was responsible for administration in the Galway laboratory at the time Dr Geagea worked there, said the reference he provided for him was factual rather than glowing but he said he had no professional concerns about him while he worked in Galway.
The hearing heard this reference was written on March 22nd, 2007, the day Dr Geagea signed off on a report saying Ms A’s biopsy was benign when in fact it was malignant.
He said Dr Geagea could review slides before signing pathology reports if he wished and he had never complained about the type of work he was asked to do.
Dr Michael Jeffers, a consultant at Tallaght Hospital, who was part of the team who reviewed Dr Geagea’s work for Hiqa, told the hearing that among the 50 errors in his work were cases of thyroid and bladder cancer which had not been picked up. But he agreed with Dr Geagea that some slide samples were suboptimal.
Prof Elaine Kay, a pathologist at Beaumont Hospital, is due to give evidence today.
The inquiry has been told she will say she found errors in just 39 of the 50 cases in which Hiqa said errors had been made.