A curious case of misdiagnosis
Taslima Begum, 55, a resident of Fatikchhari upazila in Chattogram, had her uterus removed three years ago through a hysterctomy. As she was feeling unwell recently, her family took her to see a medicine specialist in the port city, and the doctor prescribed her some medical tests.
Taslima's family accompanied her to Chevron Clinical Laboratory on October 5 to have the tests done. To their utter surprise, according to one of the reports, delivered on October 7, her test came positive for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (abnormal growth of cells on the surface of the cervix that could potentially lead to cervical cancer).
Cervix is the lower part of the uterus in the female reproductive system.
“After seeing the report, we were shocked and rushed to the chamber of gynaecologist Rawshan Ara Begum, who had performed the hysterectomy on my mother,” said Russell Uddin, Taslima's son.
“Dr Rawshan was just as surprised and told us that the report was not correct,” he added.
“She asked us to contact Chevron Clinical Laboratory and inform the authorities about the matter,” said Russell. “We rushed to the lab and asked them to perform the test once again.”
“On October 10, the test was done again and the result came negative (for cervicovaginal neoplasm),” he said.
“If we had gone to an oncologist with the first report instead of the previous gynaecologist, the doctor would have started cancer treatment,” said the patient's son.
“It is sheer negligence from the staff and doctors of the diagnostic centre,” he said. “We want everyone to be aware and request the authorities to take action against the diagnostic centre.”
Contacted, Dr Rawshan admitted to having performed the surgery on the patient, but declined to make any further comment.
Contacted, Pulak Parial, general manager of Chevron Clinical Laboratory, said he was not aware of the incident. “Let me know the name of the doctor who performed the test,” he said.
When this correspondent told him that the report was signed by Dr Md Mizanur Rahman, he advised the correspondent to talk to the doctor.
Contacted over phone, Dr Mizanur said he did not see the patient; he just saw a slide.
“I see the slide of pap smear of patients... the laboratory technicians provide me the slides and I examine those,” he said, adding, “Sampling error may have occured in this case.”
“As the technicians do not maintain barcode system, possibility of sampling error is 0.5 percent... that means one mistake might happen in every 200 tests,” he said. “When the patient came to me again and told me her medical history, I performed the test again and the result came negative.”
He said he talked to the authorities of the laboratory and asked them to be cautious to avert this sort of error in future.
Contacted, Chattogram Civil Surgeon Azizur Rahman Siddique said he had heard about the incident but no one came to him with a written complaint. “If the patient's family lodges a complaint with us, we would go for investigation,” he said.
It is worth mentioning that after an MRI was performed on the waist of octogenarian Nazir Ahmed on September 1, a report from the same diagnostic centre said the patient had brain tumour. Authorities of Chevron, at that time, said the staff of the lab's IT section made the mistake.
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