Bowel cancer was misdiagnosed as constipation by GPs at Sale practice

11:20am Thursday 6th January 2011

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A PENSIONER from Sale died just days after an operation to remove a massive tumour from her colon which had gone undiagnosed for months, an inquest heard.

Roselie Smith, 71, first went to Firsway Medical Centre in November 2008 complaining of constipation and lower abdomen pain, and was prescribed laxatives.

the court heard around a year later Ms Smith, who lived on the town’s Granary Way, presented again at the surgery with similar symptoms, then in February 2010, and was then seen a further four times in March by doctors at the practice as her symptoms became increasingly worse.

she was eventually admitted as an emergency on March 31 where a CT scan at Trafford General identified a large obstruction in her colon.

But after surgery in may surgeons discovered she had advanced bowel cancer which had spread in to her stomach and was inoperable. she died on may 19 of multi-organ failure.

“I think it had been present for a while,” said consultant surgeon Felix Mazarelo, who performed the operation on Ms Smith, and who told told the court he’d found a “mass” of cancer cells near her pancreas and spleen.

the inquest also heard evidence from Firsway GP, Dr Michael Holloway, who explained how the practice had been amalgamated with two others in 2008 to create a single super surgery, and that Ms Smith had not seen the same doctor twice. “It is a weakness of bigger groups,” he said. “In practice there’s a continuity problem that smaller surgeries don’t suffer with as much.”

But he also said Ms Smith’s symptoms had not been consistent with bowel cancer, and said consitipation, which was what she had been diagnosed with, was “very common” amongst the elderley.

“With old people we see this a lot,” he said. “And with large bowel cancers it’s unusual for them to present with only constipation. There’s usually rectal bleeding, loose stools and a change of bowel habits. she had none of these things.”

Verdict: Natural causes.

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