A hospital in Japan removes woman’s breast by mistake

The Chiba Cancer Centre recently made an announcement that they had removed the breast of a wrong woman.

The woman in her 30’s was in her early stage of cancer and didn’t require the breast removal surgery. The incident took place as the test samples of two patients got mixed up.

The two samples were collected on the same day by the hospital in month of October, one belonged to a woman in her 30’s while another was from a woman in her 50’s.

According to report by The Japan News, both underwent needle biopsies. In this process, the cellular tissue is collected from the breast using the needles.

The younger woman was told that she had advance cancer stage and hence the family agreed for the surgery. In December total mastectomy of the right breast was performed on her.

When the removed portion was examined the hospital found out that she had early stage of cancer. Later both the women samples were examined and genetic test was performed, when the hospital authorities discovered about the mix-up of the samples.  

"The woman in her 30s did not need a total mastectomy at the time of the initial needle biopsy," a spokesperson for the hospital said to The Japan News.

The needle biopsy samples are collected first by the doctor, and then the nurse labels it with the name of the respective patients. That sample is taken to the pathology department by another nurse, where the cellular tissue is stained by a clinical technologist so it can be examined by a pathologist.

As per the hospital the mix-up happened somewhere in between the aforesaid process.

An investigative team was established to over see this particular case. The authorities are also thinking to compensate the patient.