Breast cancer surgery blunder kept secret for nine years


A woman who had a breast removed after being wrongly diagnosed with cancer waited nine years to find out the surgery had been unnecessary.

Staff at the hospital which carried out the operation knew two weeks after the surgery that Lucy Rouse had never had cancer but did not tell her.

Now Mrs Rouse, who has accused the hospital of covering up the blunder, has received £100,000 compensation.

'I want to know why they didn't tell me. They swept this under the carpet and just hoped it would go away rather than facing up to the fact that they had made a mistake,' she said yesterday.

'I am so angry. I could have got over the shock of the mistake. Instead I have gone through years of worrying about whether it would come back and I feel I have been living under the threat of death.'

Mrs Rouse, 60, from Hornchurch, Essex, had a history of cysts and underwent a series of biopsies at Harold Wood Hospital, Romford.

After one biopsy in 1990 she was told a lump in her right breast was cancerous.

She had the breast removed but two weeks later the hospital received results from a biopsy which showed that the lump had not been malignant.

But Mrs Rouse and her husband Alan - who was himself dying of cancer of the pancreas - were left in the dark by the hospital which even sent her for a bone scan despite knowing she had not had cancer.

In 1995 she asked to be moved to the Royal Marsden Hospital, London, because she was not happy being seen by junior doctors at Harold Wood.

Four years later a doctor from New Zealand read through her notes, discovered the mistake and told Mr and Mrs Rouse.

'My whole head was in a whirl,' Mrs Rouse, who has three grown-up sons, said. 'The whole room was frozen solid. It was awful.

'My husband was sitting beside me and he had cancer and he had spent all those years taking care of me and my children had gone through all that worry for nothing. I couldn't take it in and still can't.'

Mr Rouse died three months later. Describing her ordeal as 'devastating', Mrs Rouse, who even trained as a breast cancer counsellor to cope with the trauma, said: 'It was very difficult for the whole family to cope with but Alan was very supportive and loving.

'He looked after me and was always there for me.

'I used to enjoy dressmaking but after the operation there were times when I couldn't do things like pick up pins I had dropped on the floor and he would do that for me as well as looking after the boys. 'Alan was so loving and caring but I felt as though my life had changed. We used to love ballroom dancing but I couldn't wear nice strapless dresses like everyone else.

'I wore high necks and covered up my scars.

'When I went through the menopause I couldn't have HRT because I had a history of breast cancer so that was hard for the family because I suffered really badly from it.'

Mrs Rouse, who now wears a prosthetic breast, added: 'Every time I felt ill I thought I was getting cancer again.'

Her case was taken up by medical negligence experts Gadsby Wicks. Barking and Havering Health Authority admitted liability on behalf of the hospital and settled out of court.

In a statement it said that 'misreporting of tests had led to unnecessary treatment'.

It added: 'The health authority apologised unreservedly and whole-heartedly for this mistake and the obvious distress that it caused Mrs Rouse and her family'.

But a spokesman said the hospital did not know why she had not been told there had been a mistake immediately.

'I really don't know why it took so long to come out.

'The health authority only found out about this when Mrs Rouse's solicitor contacted us and the surgeon and histologist involved had left the hospital.'

She declined to comment on whether there had been a cover-up.

Mrs Rouse now believes all women should get a second opinion if told that a breast lump is malignant.

'I wish I had got a second opinion. Instead I have to try and come to terms with this and I don't know how to do that.'