E Ontario Now

In Canada, there is a case of a mistaken mastectomy doctor being investigated. Dr. Barbara Heartwell is the surgeon and she has 28 years of experience. She works at Hôtel-Dieu Grace Hospital in Windsor, Ontario. She misread a biopsy report and thought that a woman’s breast was cancerous, so she surgically removed the breast. Later, she found out that she misread the report and that the woman did not have cancer after all. She did admit to this mistake, and said that it was her mistake and not the hospital’s doing.

The hospital has started an internal investigation as to what went wrong in the case of Laurie Johnston of Leamington, Ontario. Another patient of the hospital is Janice Laporte. She heard about the incident through publicity, and she came forward and said the same thing happened to her nine years ago. She had her surgery to remove her breast and was told a week after the surgery that she didn’t have cancer. The hospital did not know about the situation with Janice Laporte until she went to the media about it. There were also five more cases involving patients of Dr. Heartwell in which the pathology reports showed errors.

After this news broke, the hospital has been inundated with calls from former patients of the hospital who had Dr. Heartwell as their surgeon. They want to know if the same thing happened to them-whether their breast or breasts were really cancerous. The hospital had set up a hotline for concerned patients to call.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario are doing research involving the pathologist, Dr. Olive Williams and Dr. Barbara Heartwell. These investigations usually take from 3 to 10 months to complete, but if the findings prove that these doctors were incompetent, a disciplinary hearing would be held to determine their fate.

Both doctors have been suspended from their duties until further notice.