Protest against doctor swells

22 more women claim surgeon harmed them
Apr 14, 2007 02:30 AM
Robert Cribb
Tanya Talaga
Staff reporters

For the past 17 years, Frances Borrow has lived with a plastic bag constantly strapped to her stomach that collects her urine, the legacy of a 1990 hysterectomy during which her bladder was accidentally sliced.

Borrow is one of more than three dozen women who now say they suffered lasting physical and emotional injuries after surgery by Dr. Richard Austin, a Scarborough obstetrician and gynecologist.

They all wonder if they could have avoided years of hardship had they known about Austin's surgical complication rate, a string of malpractice suits against him and a pattern of patient complaints.

Three weeks ago, the Star published the stories of 15 women who had filed lawsuits and formal complaints against Austin for injuries such as punctured organs and incontinence.

Since then, another 22 women have come forward.

Most of them are considering legal action against the doctor.

We don't know if their cases were more complicated than usual, or if conditions in the operating room were less than ideal at the time of their surgeries.

Austin and his lawyer did not return requests for an interview.

In a move to combat the problem of medical secrecy, which has been the subject of an investigative series by the Star, the provincial government announced this week it will require hospitals to report unexpected death rates and infection rates alongside the wait times posted on a government website for procedures in five key areas.

Those figures should appear on www.ontariowaittimes.ca by April 1, 2008.

The government will also require each hospital board in Ontario to set up a quality committee that reports directly to it.

But the new provincial disclosure rules stop short of compelling doctors or hospitals to make the complication rates of individual surgeons public.

While data is collected on patient care, hospitals don't make the information public.

And public complaints about doctors are tightly guarded secrets of the medical profession's self-regulating College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Only 1 per cent of the complaints investigated trigger a college disciplinary hearing that is public.

The college received at least seven formal complaints against Austin between 1999 and 2006, the Star has learned.

To date, none has triggered a public disciplinary hearing, and Austin has an unblemished record on the college's website.

College officials say privacy legislation forbids them from commenting about individual doctors' complaint records.

Court documents provide the only public information to date about Austin's track record in the operating room.

The documents, filed as part of a $500,000 lawsuit by one former patient in 2003, show Austin had complication rates for total abdominal hysterectomies (the surgical removal of the uterus by an incision in the abdominal wall rather than the vagina) of 30 per cent in 2000, 30 per cent in 2001, 9 per cent in 2002 and 10 per cent in 2003.

A 1992 Ohio study of 160,000 hysterectomies found a complication rate of 9.1 per cent was the average for that operation.

Dr. Steven Jackson, chief of medical staff at Scarborough Hospital where Austin has privileges, said he could not say anything about Austin's record.

Dr. Hugh Scott, CEO and president of the hospital, also refused to comment.

"It is quite inappropriate for me to speculate on anything. But I want to re-emphasize on a go-forward position this hospital is very committed to safety and to quality," Scott said.

Concerns about secrecy and lax oversight of physicians in Ontario aren't new, but when Frances Borrow read the Star story on Austin, she was stunned.

Borrow claims an operation by Austin nearly two decades ago left her incontinent and in pain, shuffling from one medical appointment to the next in search of a way to repair a hole in her bladder.

She says several subsequent surgeries and procedures failed to correct the problem.

She hasn't been able to work or even leave the house for any length of time because she needs to be near a bathroom at all times."I'd be out in a mall or someplace and I'd see the pee on the floor and people would be looking at me. I just stopped socializing.

"I've been robbed since I was 49 years old. From then on, it's been a nightmare. I was a very outgoing, happy person. It was like my whole world turned around.

"Nobody should have to live that way."

In 1982, Christine Beer checked into Scarborough General for a tubal coagulation, a routine procedure to block her fallopian tubes.

Ten days later, the mother of two died of septic shock.

One medical expert who testified at a coroner's inquest in January 1983 described her as a "bloated green mess."

The coroner's jury ruled Beer died of natural causes, but the family didn't agree.

The family sued Austin in civil court.

After five years, they settled out of court for a significant sum of money, according to Beer's sister, Allison Shearing, who wouldn't disclose the sum.

When Shearing saw Austin's name in the Star article, it took her breath away.

"To see the other women. You get so angry. Some of it is the hurt from your own loss," said Shearing, an operating room nurse living in the Orangeville area.

In 2005, Austin operated on Joan Lang to remove scar tissue near her ovaries. Austin performed bladder surgery on her in 2003.

During the 2005 operation, Lang's bowel was perforated, filling her insides with waste material. Hours after the procedure, she was sent home.

That night she became violently ill and had emergency surgery the next day.

Her husband Norm remembers clearly the warning from her doctor: "There's a very good chance she isn't going to make it."

Joan Lang spent more than two weeks recovering in hospital.

"I can't lift, I can't run, I can't play with my grandson," she says. "I lost my hair, lost weight from stress. I'm still 100 pounds. I can't get up to where I was."

She is still in pain.

The college sent her a letter in February that said an investigation into her claim is proceeding.

Toronto lawyer Amani Oakley, of Stein, Oakley and Oakley, is acting for 19 of Austin's former patients.

"All of them are calling because they want to help other women," she said. "They want to support the others who want to make a claim."

Carole Fallon is one of them. She says her bowel was ruptured during a 1999 hysterectomy and she has been in excruciating pain ever since.

She asked both the hospital and the college about Austin and received glowing reports.

"I was told he'd never had any complaints. I just can't believe we aren't told about this. Now I read in the paper that there were lawsuits dating back to 1991. Why couldn't I know that? If you're told, you can make your own choice and decision."
source : www.thestar.com