The Women Sentenced To Die By Arrogance
One woman has died and two more are unlikely to survive after one of Britain’s worst breast cancer screening blunders, it has emerged. They were among 18 patients wrongly given the all-clear by “arrogant” consultant radiologist Dr Amjad Husien.
{mosimage}His mistakes meant they faced a potentially fatal delay in treatment of up to two years. Some went on to have their breasts removed in surgery which may not have been necessary had they been diagnosed earlier.
Dr Husien, who worked at two hospitals in Greater Manchester, could have been stopped 18 months earlier if fellow doctors’ warnings about his behaviour had been heeded. His “personal misreading” of breast X-rays was never routinely double – checked and women patients paid the price, an independent report found. It said his colleagues had been “immediately” concerned about the way he worked. Although they raised the alarm within months of his arrival at Trafford General Hospital, he was allowed to continue working. Dr Husien’s victims demanded to know why more wasn’t done to stop him.
Fellow doctors lodged a formal complaint about his performance in November 2003, accusing him of being “uncooperative, arrogant, brusque and unkind” with patients and other staff, the report said.
He spent too little time examining mammograms and failed to use scans and biopsies to make a diagnosis. But hospital chiefs took no action, missing the opportunity to uncover his incompetence and serious understaffing in the department.
For the next 18 months, Iraqi-born Dr Husien continued working at the hospital and as a locum at North Manchester General Hospital, until his suspension in April 2005.
An investigation led to nearly 2,500 mammograms being re-examined. They showed 18 women given the all-clear had been suffering from potentially life-threatening breast cancer for at least three months. One woman’s cancer was spotted two years after she was given the all-clear by the radiologist.
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