Canadian Woman to Press Charges Against Capital Health after Losing Breast Due to Depressing Hospital Records Mix-up

Canada's Capital District Health Authority in the province of Nova Scotia is about to get enmeshed in a potentially disruptive legal landmark case. A woman from Halifax is about to press charges against the health service provider after losing her breast due to a sickening hospital records mix-up.

While the unidentified 60-year old woman lost her breast needlessly, the patient who should have had the corrective mastectomy procedure never had it.

The woman wants damages following the "emotional and physical scarring" she has suffered, Ray Wagner, her lawyer, was quoted by the Chronicle Herald.

"Obviously, your first emotion is anger that it happened to you, that you went through an unnecessary procedure, anger about the fact that you were having to deal with the prospect of having cancer, and then being advised that you didn't," Mr Wagner said.

The Halifax Capital Health District Health Authority has issued a public apology on Monday, in an apparent bid to douse off potential damages to the business.

But citizens are sure to raise pandemonium as the hospital records mix-up not only affected two cancer patients, but four.

In its statement, Capital Health admitted recording errors had led to the mix-up. The first case involved the needless mastectomy procedure, while the second case involved a tissue sample mix-up thus enabling a patient to receive an unnecessary diagnostic biopsy meant for another patient.

All four events affected cancer patients, but were unrelated. Suffice to say, all occurred in the different steps of preparation and analysis of tissue samples.

The mastectomy incident, which happened in April, became only known to the 60-year old woman two months after the surgery when her doctor told her about it.

"She accepted the fact of the diagnosis of the cancer, accepted the treatment which is radical treatment and then to be advised afterwards that you never did have it," Mr Wagner said.

"Now you're short a breast as a result of the mastectomy and now you have the anger and the emotion and the upset of having a radical procedure performed on you that wasn't necessary."

"This is very difficult for staff, too, because they are working extremely hard to do the right things," Chris Power, president and CEO of Capital Health, said. "So you can imagine this is very difficult for them, but ... these errors are a combination of systems and human error."

Despite the incident, Ms Power said the authority did not terminate anyone following the sickening hospital records mix-up.

"[We are] very confident that these are isolated cases. Not to our knowledge have they happened before in Nova Scotia. They've certainly happened in other places around the world, lots of times and across Canada but not to our knowledge in Nova Scotia, we're very confident," she said.

"As devastating as this was for our patients it's been a hugely difficult time for our staff who were involved as well," Ms Power said. "Nobody wants this to happen."