Surgeon sentenced for misdiagnosis

A surgeon from the Claude-Bernard Hospital-Clinic has just been recognized as responsible for a diagnostic errorhaving reduced a patient’s chances of survival. The Metz Court of Appeal condemned the surgeon for having delayed diagnosing the disease of the victim, an anesthetist who died in 2005 of rectal cancer. In his judgment, taken up by The Lorraine Republican, the Court considers that “the absence of post-operative follow-up and visit [ont] caused a delay of several months in the discovery of cancer […] and the implementation of additional investigations to take into account persistent symptoms […] brought to light in July 2003, whereas they could have been in August or September 2002 “. This consequent delay reduced by 15% the chances of survival of the patient, according to the judges.

The deceased anesthesiologist also worked at the Claude-Bernard clinic. He died on August 28, 2005. Three years earlier, he consulted his colleague, a surgeon specializing in visceral and gastric surgery. The latter operated on in 2002 for an abscess of the anal margin and then for a fistula, in 2003, without detecting a cancerous lesion. A few months later, another surgeon diagnosed a Colon Cancer at an advanced stage. The patient died two years later at the age of 52.

For the victim’s widow, the diagnosis was poorly made and the surgeon was “negligent” in the words of his lawyer. A first complaint filed about ten years ago had given nothing. A second judicial expertise, ordered by the Metz Court of Appeal, therefore ruled in favor of the widow. According to the latter’s lawyer, neither Rectal touch or colonoscopy were not made by the surgeon, specifies Le Républicain lorrain. The person denies, explaining that he did not report because he had not spotted anything abnormal.

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