ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - A Newfoundland Supreme Court justice has been appointed to head a judicial inquiry into botched tests for hundreds of breast cancer patients.
Justice Margaret Cameron - the province's first female Supreme Court judge - will hold the inquiry into the problem at the Eastern Health Authority in an effort to determine how and why 317 patients received the wrong cancer screening results.
Cameron will be able to subpoena witnesses as she examines what went wrong with the tests, why the problem wasn't detected sooner, and whether authorities responded in an appropriate and timely manner.
In August 2005, the Eastern Health Authority arranged for Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto to redo more than 2,000 hormone receptor tests going back to May 1997 after oncologists discovered inconsistent results in breast tumour samples.
From October 2005 to February 2006, the authority received the results of the retests and while the 117 patients whose treatments were changed were notified soon after of the results, the remainder of the 317 total were not.
About 100 patients have filed a class-action lawsuit against the health authority.
