Canada's pathologists are in Ottawa this weekend, attending a conference where they're expected to set national standards for the testing and treatment of breast cancer.
The move by the Canadian Association of Pathologists to set uniform standards of diagnosis across Canada comes in the wake of high-profile cases in several provinces where patients were misdiagnosed or had their tests botched.
There are hundreds of cases in Canada of inaccurate diagnoses for cancer patients. Newfoundland recently concluded public hearings into more than 400 inaccurate tests performed on patients that affected the type of cancer care they received.
In some cases, patients did not find out for years that their tests had been inaccurate. But concerns about testing by pathologists aren't limited to just to Newfoundland.
Investigations related to potentially inaccurate testing were also launched in New Brunswick and Manitoba.
"We do not want a Newfoundland (type problem) in any other province," Dr. Jagdish Butany, president of the Canadian Association of Pathologists, told Â鶹´«Ã½.
Butany said there are many ways for tests to go wrong.
"(Tests are) a multi-stage process, there's more than 40 steps involved and in any one of those steps you can have something go wrong which can make the test result look different," he said.
Labs should be subject to routine spot checks, something only Ontario and British Columbia are doing, the association says.
"In Newfoundland, clearly something went wrong and it wasn't detected for a very long period time. What we're proposing is an accreditation program that would detect errors like that early so it wouldn't go on for years," Dr. Sylvia Asa of Toronto's University Health Network said.
The group wants a meeting with federal Health Minister Tony Clement to express their concerns.
Some pathologists have also said they are concerned about a national shortage of those in their profession. They say the shortage may be taking a negative toll on Canada's health-care system as a whole.
There are concerns that unless the number of physicians providing laboratory diagnostic services for such diseases as cancer is increased, pathologists will be forced to work longer hours and do more increasingly complex tests. Some fear that could create even more problems and inaccurate test results.
With a report from CTV's Rosemary Thompson
