Former N.B. pathologist says he hopes to return to work soon

The dismissed pathologist at the centre of a New Brunswick inquiry into misdiagnosed medical tests says he hopes to be back on the job soon.

On Friday, Dr. Rajgopal Menon, 73,  told the public inquiry examining pathology problems in Miramichi that he is not allowed to practise medicine until he gets remedial training.

Menon says the College of Physicians and Surgeons suspended his licence last year after a review of several complaints concerning the accuracy of his work.

The college later reinstated Menon's licence, but told him he can't practise until he gets training and convinces the college he is competent to return to a laboratory.

Menon says he is having difficulty finding a university in Canada that will re-train him and he suspects that is partly because of the publicity surrounding his case.

But he says he plans to keep trying because he believes his working life is not yet over.

Testimony to wrap up Friday

Menon concluded almost three days of testimony before the commission at the University of Moncton on Friday.

He worked as a pathologist at the Miramichi Regional Health Authority from 1995 until February 2007, when he was suspended following complaints about incomplete diagnoses and delayed lab results.

Health Minister Mike Murphy called a formal inquiry into the pathology work at the Miramichi hospital after an independent audit of 227 cases of breast and prostate cancer biopsies from 2004-05 found 18 per cent had incomplete results and three per cent had been misdiagnosed.

Nearly 24,000 cases from 1995 to 2007 are being reviewed by a lab in Ottawa after an independent audit of Menon's work found serious errors and omissions.

Menon has apologized to the patients, but said he was not aware of any errors in his work and takes "practically zero" responsibility for any incomplete or misdiagnosed results.

System to blame, Menon says

In his testimony on Thursday, Menon said the blame lies with the hospital administration in the northeastern community of Miramichi. Menon said he had a heavy caseload and often had to work alone. He also testified that he struggled with a new computer system that was introduced for managing patient records and he often reverted to writing reports by hand.

"If I hadn't had so many computers, and if I had had a secretary properly assigned to me, I wouldn't have had so much trouble," he said.

"Once you get into trouble, it just goes on and on and on and on, and after that it is simply impossible to catch up."

By 2004, Menon said that the administrators at the Miramichi hospital were "out to get" him.

"They were constantly harassing," Menon said.

The former CEO of the Miramichi hospital, John Tucker, previously told the inquiry he was "borderline desperate" for a pathologist when he hired Menon in the 1990s and didn't check his references closely.

A doctor who twice conducted reviews of Menon's work testified this week that there are more problems with the pathologist's record than originally reported.

Rosemary Henderson said there were 14 incorrectly diagnosed cancer tests done by Menon, not six or eight, as first reported.

She told Justice Paul Creaghan, who is chairing the inquiry, that her testing turned up more cases of people being told they did not have cancer when they did. She also told the inquiry that she found "discrepancies" with more than 40 of 226 cases she reviewed from 2004 to 2006 for breast and prostate cancers.

These cases needed "correcting," Henderson said, because some of them were missed cancer diagnoses, although they may have been picked up later if symptoms recurred in patients.

She is still looking into cases from 2006, not just breast and prostate cancer tests, but a wide variety of tests.

Henderson reviewed Menon's work in the spring of 2007 for the New Brunswick College of Physicians and Surgeons. In November 2007, she did a more in-depth review for the Miramichi General Hospital.

Cataracts, tremors could have affected work

A peer review of Menon's work, released in March, indicated the pathologist had serious medical problems, including cataracts and tremors in his hands, which could have affected the accuracy of his work.

College registrar Dr. Ed Schollenberg told the public commission that the first complaint about Menon was received in 2006. Menon was repeatedly told that if he retired, the matter would be considered resolved, but Menon refused, Schollenberg said. Menon testified that he refused to retire because it felt like "blackmail."

"I mean I have to give up my job altogether and then retire, and … maybe in hindsight it would have been better, but I don't know, that is like blackmail for me," Menon said.

The inquiry will not assign any criminal responsibility for the misdiagnoses. Creaghan is expected to make recommendations to the government on how to prevent excessive misdiagnoses from happening again, by Jan. 1.

The inquiry will move to Miramichi in June, where any of the patients affected by the initial review of 227 cases can testify. It will return to Moncton for a final four weeks of hearings in September.