Lives endangered due to medical scanning errors, says Ombudsmann

Repeated failures in the interpretation of CTS, X -rays and other medical scans lead to avoidable deaths and delays in diagnosing cancer and warned England’s health citizen.

The most common problems include doctors who do not recognize anomalies, are delayed or not carried out scans and the results are not pursued properly.

The ombudsman has confirmed or partially confirmed 45 cases that contain failures in medical imaging in the past four years, and says that lessons have to be learned to avoid the same errors again.

According to NHS England, employees are working extremely hard to protect the patients, but recognize that it has more to do to improve the “reaction to serious health problems”.

In one case, the medical staff at the Wexham Park Hospital in Slough repeatedly diagnosed an 82-year-old man with colon cancer and, according to the ombudsman of the parliament and the health service (phso), suffered him.

The man from Buckinghamshire went five times between August and October 2021 to A&E.

A scan carried out in August showed a lesion in the chair.

However, the clinicians reported that the examination did not achieve anomalies, which led to a six -week delay in diagnosis and operation.

The patient also had an X -ray in October that interpreted an obstacle in his small intestine, but this X -ray was not checked and he was released and sent home.

Later this month the cancer was diagnosed and he had an operation to remove part of the intestine. The operation discovered a different mass elsewhere in his body.

Just a few months later, the man took his life and left a note that said he could no longer deal with the pain.

The Ombudsman, Rebecca Hilsenrath KC, said the employees had not treated his pain five times.

Failures in his care “were likely to be in the patient’s decision to end his life,” said her report.

The man’s daughter said: “I really tried to get the doctors to listen.

“I had the feeling that something was wrong, and I pleaded several times that they kept him in the hospital, but they just released him and did nothing to help him.”

In an explanation from the hospital it says: “We are very sorry that our care has failed in this case, and we will soon have another meeting with the patient’s family to update the changes that we have made since then.

“This also means that older patients with abdominal pain are checked appropriately.”

The trust also agreed to pay the family of £ 4,000, as recommended by Phso.

In another study, the ombudsman found that, despite repeated scans, a cancer -like tumor was incorrectly identified as benign (not cancer -like), which indicated in other ways.

The patient, a 54-year-old man, had his first scan in Tenerife after feeling uncomfortable on vacation.

His brother said: “When my brother collapsed in Tenerife, the hospital immediately identified the tumor for what it was [an aggressive brain tumour] And even offered to remove it.

“But my brother wanted to come home, he thought the best place for him to have treatment in the NHS.”

The man returned to Gillingham, where the local hospital carried out further scans with identifying the tumor and transferred it to specialists from King’s College Hospital.

The staff there “classified the diagnosis and said the tumor was not like cancer. The man was not offered chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

He died a month after an operation to remove the tumor that was confirmed as cancer -like.

If the cancer had been identified correctly, it could have been operated on months before and possibly the option of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, said Phso.

While the survival rate for this cancer is bad, the examination of the ombudsman indicates that the man may have had a few additional months of life.

His brother said: “I wanted the King’s College Hospital to recognize her mistakes so that I can stop taking care of my strength, to understand what happened to him and to remember my brother when he was when he was alive.”

In an explanation, the King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: “We fully recognize that mistakes were made in the care of this patient, and we apologized to his family at the time of the incident.

“Learning from mistakes when they occur is crucial, and because of this case, we have made a number of changes to improve the security and effectiveness of care that our teams offer.”

The trust has agreed to pay the £ 3,500 family.

Ms. Hilsenrath, whose team examines independently of complaints, said: “In any of the cases we examined and confirmed, a real person whose life was affected by failure in care.

“They are also all cases in which the organizations involved did not find that something went wrong.”

The report from 2021 Ombudsman System -wide improvements recommended in the problems with medical imaging, but Ms. Hilsenrath said, while it made some progress, she still saw cases in which people care for people was “suboptimal, often with devastating consequences”.

It is “critical” that measures are taken to improve the digital infrastructure in the NHS and ensure that people are quickly diagnosed and treated, added.

Dr. Katharine Halliday, President of the Royal College of Radiologist, agreed that the digital infrastructure was required.

“The ombudsman emphasizes some devastating failures in the NHS, and we have to learn from this experiences together in order to promote sensible changes,” she said.

“However, it must also be recognized that these results reflect a system that is overloaded and subject to.”

The college says that it is exposed to a 30% deficiency of clinical radiologists, which is expected to increase to 40% by 2028.

An NHS spokesman said: “In 2024, the NHS delivered a record number of tests and checks, a fifth more than a pandemic, but we know that there is more to do to improve the recognition and reaction of serious health problems.”

A spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs said: “Our deepest sympathies are affected by everyone who is affected by the mistakes that are highlighted in this shocking report.”

The spokesman added that they opened more community diagnostic centers (CDCs) and use new technologies such as AI so that “all patients can receive first-class care”.

The changes were also introduced in cancer treatment, said the spokesman, in which 100,000 other patients who receive a diagnosis within four weeks and up to 19,000 other people are transferred to the treatment within two months.