Pathologist at heart of N.B. inquiry into botched tests apologizes

Dr. Rajgopal Menon, the dismissed pathologist at the centre of widespread concern over botched medical tests and autopsies in New Brunswick, has apologized to his former patients for any errors he may have made.

He offered the comments during testimony at a provincial inquiry in Moncton Wednesday afternoon.

"I would like to thank this commission … for giving me the opportunity to explain my side of the story," he told the inquiry.

"And also I wish to sincerely apologize to any patient if I have made an error in reading their pathology slides. I was not aware of any errors in my work."

Menon, 73, 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.

A formal inquiry into the affair, headed by Justice Paul Creaghan, began May 5. Menon's testimony is expected to run until Friday afternoon.

Wednesday marked the first time Menon publicly acknowledged there may have been problems with his work. Until now, he has hinted that he felt unfairly targetted by the inquiry and that hospital officials could have done more to support him.

Following Menon's apology, most of his testimony Wednesday was spent outlining his credentials and experience.

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.

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

Tucker, who was CEO until February 2002, when he was convicted of 17 counts of fraud and breach of trust, told the inquiry that he was desperate because prior to the lab opening, tests from Chatham and Newcastle had to be sent to Moncton or Saint John for processing.

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

More problems than first thought: Henderson

In concluding her testimony Tuesday,  Dr. Rosemary Henderson said there were 14 incorrectly diagnosed cancer tests done by Menon — not six or eight, as first reported.

She told Creaghan that her testing turned up more cases of people being told they did not have cancer when they did.

"There were all together 14 cases, between the two years, of false-negative reports — nine and five is 14? That is correct? All right. I'm just giving you an alternative way of putting those numbers in perspective," said Henderson, a pathologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown.

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, but 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.

Concerns about Menon first arose in August of 2006 when a woman whose mother had died in the emergency ward at the hospital noticed that the pathologist had deemed the older woman a heavy smoker on his autopsy report.

That wasn't the case at all, she wrote in a complaint to another doctor, Edmund Schollenberg.

He in turn called the Miramichi hospital and told senior medical staff that they might have a problem.

That phone call unleashed a series of events over the past two years that has shaken confidence in New Brunswick's health-care system.

New Brunswick's commission of inquiry is supposed to report back to the provincial government within six months.