This is already the second time that at the Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva, the central hospital of the south, a patient's breast was accidentally removed because the pathological examination that showed cancer and led to the operation belonged to another patient who was diagnosed with the disease.
The serious omission occurred in June 2022 in Soroka based on a pathological examination of another woman, and after the mistake was discovered, the medical staff at Soroka told the patient, Merav Bar-Chen, 51 years old from Be'er Sheva, that this was the first time this had happened at the hospital. However, it turns out that a similar case had happened to the patient at the medical institution also in August 2008.
The affair, revealed here for the first time, is based on the patients' medical file, which contains documentation of the cases, on the testimony of the patients, and on the medical negligence claims filed against the Klalit Health Insurance Fund, the owner and manager of Soroka Hospital - one of the hospitals The biggest in Israel.
"Israel Hayom" has learned that these days the Ministry of Health is investigating the case following the report of the hospital and the complaint of attorney Shay Feuering who represents Merav and demanded in December 2022 that the Ministry of Health establish an inspection committee to investigate the difficult case, with the aim of "preventing similar cases in the future and to To investigate how such a significant malfunction occurs several times in the same hospital."
"The Ministry of Health should investigate", Merav Bar-Chen hopes that no one will go through what happened, photo: Liron Moldovan
The test that got involved
The request also states that "the behavior of the medical staff who requested to perform X-rays on the patient, even though they were aware of the possibility that it was a mistake, should be checked."
A week ago, Mirev filed a medical malpractice claim with the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court against Klalit as well, demanding financial compensation.
The lawsuit was filed by Attorney Foiring and Attorney Nimrod Halevi.
On April 11, 2022, Merav, a mother of three children, underwent a periodic mammogram and a breast ultrasound in Soroka, from which findings in the left breast were suspected.
As a result, on April 14, she underwent a biopsy in Soroka, during which six samples were taken from the breast tissue.
On the 26th of the month, she was called to speak with a breast surgeon at the hospital, who told her based on the pathological examination that she had malignant breast cancer and that there was an urgent need for surgery to remove most of the breast and glands.
A chilling mismatch
Indeed, at the beginning of June 2022, the surgery was performed in Soroka, during which a significant part of the left breast and the lymph nodes from the armpit were removed as planned.
Routinely, samples from the surgically excised tissues were sent to the pathology institute in Soroka.
After about two weeks, Merev called the surgeon from Soroka who told her that the pathological answer was delayed "because there is a discrepancy between the results of the biopsy that showed malignant cancer cells and those of the tissue that was surgically removed - in which no cancer cells can be seen."
At the same time, he told her: "You have cancer, in any case you should continue treatments with radiation."
deaf ears
Merav began to fear that they were hiding from her the grave and unusual mistake that happened in the pathological examination that led to the mastectomy.
She turned to a doctor specializing in diagnostic imaging in Soroka and shared her concerns, however, according to the lawsuit, the doctor "reacted rudely, bluntly and with complete rejection and denied this possibility time and time again, while reprimanding Merev for attributing the mistake to Soroka."
"There has never been confusion between tissues and certainly not in Soroka," the doctor claimed and told Merev that it was impudence and a display of disrespect on her part to bring up such a possibility.
The doctor even called the surgeon in Merav's presence, who also said that confusion between the patients' samples was an impossible situation.
However, "Israel Hayom" learned that completely contrary to what the doctors told Meriv, a similar case actually happened in the past in Soroka in August 2008. In that case, a patient received the interpretation of a biopsy test, from which it turned out that she had a malignant cancerous lump in her breast, she also had to undergo a mastectomy and taking drugs with severe side effects.
However, the magnitude of the failure became clear to her as well.
The pathological examination that showed a malignant disease and led to surgery was also in this case of a different subject.
In this case too, in 2011 the victim filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against Soroka, the hearings of which have already ended.
Despite the treatment she received, Merav did not give up and demanded that a compatibility test be performed between the tissues and it was revealed in the updated pathological report that she was indeed right and the operation was performed by mistake based on the test of another patient.
The medical file states that she underwent the surgery and that during it "no evidence of a tumor was discovered, and upon examination of the tissue classification it was found that the roll of tissue where the tumor was did not belong to this patient. Therefore, in the biopsy from this patient there was only benign breast tissue. The diagnosis of cancer in the woman is a mistake and a full explanation is provided For a woman this diagnosis is wrong."
Lawyers Shay Feuring and Nimrod Halevi,
the price of error
According to the indictment, after the mistake was discovered, Mirav was invited to a meeting with the doctors in Soroka on July 6, during which she was told "we are sorry to tell you - you do not have cancer, there was a mistake in the diagnosis", and they admitted that she was right in her complaints.
"The breast tissue in which the cancer cells were sampled was sampled from the body of another woman and was mistakenly marked as belonging to Merev, and he made it clear that the meaning is that she does not have cancer."
According to the lawsuit, "There is no way to describe Merav's feeling on the day she was told she had cancer. The shock, pain, and sense of helplessness she experienced were unbearable. "She was overcome with grief that her days were
numbered and feared that she would be separated from her family and that she would not get to be a part of her loved ones' lives.
In light of the wrong diagnosis, she underwent a series of additional and unnecessary tests and in vain underwent surgery under general anesthesia to remove part of the left breast and the lymph node.
"As a result, she suffered pain and was limited in her functioning, and this while the doctors in Soroka dismissed and rudely treated her legitimate and requested request that a tissue classification test be performed on her."
The attorneys Feuering and Levy also claimed in the lawsuit that "the record in the medical file is missing and was edited in a way designed to hide essential facts concerning the treatment, in Soroka they refused the legitimate demand to hand over the report of the investigation of the incident," and that the doctors did not tell Meriv the truth "when they told her that there was a mistake in the biopsy tests It's a fictional script."
Not the first time
In addition, Merav told "Israel Hayom" that "at first the surgeon in Soroka told me, 'Sorry, you don't have cancer,' there was a mistake in the biopsy because it was from another patient and that this is an unusual case and the first of its kind in Soroka.
"However, later it was revealed to me that there had already been a similar case in the past in Soroka and I realized that the public must know that there may be such cases and that even the biopsy tests are really not 'Torah from Sinai' and may also contain serious errors. "The Ministry of Health must now investigate how the serious errors
happened The goddess in Soroka and correct the practices and ways of working," she demands. "A mistake like this could cost a person's life.
It's true that I don't have cancer, but I didn't have cancer either, I wasn't supposed to go through and my family didn't have to go through the physical and mental agony we went through."
The Ministry of Health responded: "The case was reported as acceptable to the Ministry, and in an examination with the hospital it became clear that a mistake was made in the identification phase of the patient's examination.
"After the investigation carried out by the hospital, corrective actions were taken in order to prevent the recurrence of additional cases in the future.
At the same time, in December 2022, a complaint was submitted to the Public Acceptability Commission for the Medical Professions at the Ministry of Health about the case, and the Commission is currently in the phase of collecting the material and upon completion of its work, the conclusions will be communicated to both parties as is customary."
"Israel Hayom" requested the responses of the managements of the Klalit Health Insurance Fund and the Soroka Hospital and asked to know how the two cases were investigated and what the hospital did to learn lessons and prevent further incidents, but the Klalit and Soroka Hospital responded only that "the statement of claim has been received by us, we will study it and respond as is customary within the procedure legal, and the case was reported to the Ministry of Health."
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