Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

Fri 10 Oct 2006Man's stomach removed after hospital mix-up, court toldA mix-up over tissue samples at St Vincent's hospital in Dublin led to a young man being wrongly diagnosed with stomach cancer and to his stomach being removed, his lawyer told the High Court in Dublin yesterday.When tissues samples were being analysed in the laboratory, the sample of a 70-year-old cancer patient was mixed up with 21-year-old Alan O'Gorman's, it was claimed. It was only after the operation, when Mr O'Gorman's stomach was analysed and found to show no evidence of cancer, that what a surgeon later described as "a terrible mistake" was realised, the young man's counsel, Mark de Blacam SC, said.