Faulty hormone receptor testing - Newfoundland and Labrador

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http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=59f28022-1461-4b2d-810d-837c543b4d46&k=51646


Newfoundland government promising review of faulty breast cancer tests

Tara Brautigam, Canadian Press
Published: Friday, May 18, 2007
ST. JOHNS, N.L. (CP) - At least three dozen women in Newfoundland and
Labrador who received a false negative on a faulty breast cancer test have
died, a senior medical examiner says, but it's not known how many of them
died as a direct result of their cancer.

A letter signed Wednesday by Charles Hutton, a pathology expert who serves
as the province's deputy medical examiner, says that at least 36 women who
had a false negative on the error-prone hormone receptor test have died.

The women missed out on potentially life-saving treatment such as hormone
therapy, but it's also unclear how many of them, if any, died because of
that.

The letter was written to lawyer Ches Crosbie as part of a class-action
lawsuit against the province's Eastern Health Authority over the faulty
tests.

Premier Danny Williams told the legislature Thursday that the province,
out of a "moral responsibility," would undertake a review to determine how
more than 300 women received the wrong results from their hormone receptor
tests from 1997 to 2005.

"We want to make sure that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, but
most importantly the people who are affected here - the patients, the
people who have suffered, their families - they all need to know the
answers," Williams said.

Williams said the province is seeking legal advice on how best to go about
a review, but promised it would be done without delay.

"It is a very sensitive issue and a very delicate issue, and there's
issues of confidentiality of information here that are very important
because it's a medical matter," he said.

"We're going to do something. It's a question of going about it and doing
it right."

In 2005, the authority arranged for Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto to
repeat more than 2,000 hormone receptor tests dating back to May 1997
after oncologists discovered inconsistent results in breast tumour
samples.

Gerry Rogers, a St. John's filmmaker who made the Gemini Award-winning
documentary "My Left Breast" on her ordeal with breast cancer, said she
welcomes any initiative to find out how so many women received the wrong
results on their breast cancer tests.

But the revelation that at least 36 women who received a false negative on
their tests have died is distressing, she said.

"It's sad to think that these women weren't given that opportunity for
another treatment that maybe could've either prolonged their lives or
saved their lives," Rogers said.

In his letter, Hutton also suggests that it's likely there are more than
36 deceased breast cancer patients who received a false negative because
that figure comes from only 105 deceased patients confirmed by Mount
Sinai.

There are 71 more deceased breast cancer patients who have not had their
tests redone because requests to do so by their families have not been
made.

The hormone receptor tests are considered critical in evaluating a breast
cancer patient's treatment because, if the women are found to be
estrogen-and/or progesterone-positive, they may respond to hormone therapy
such as Tamoxifen.



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