Mistake By Boston Hospital Causes Death Of Health Writer Doctors, Nurses, Pharmacists Overlook Error In Cancer Patient’s Dosage Of Chemotherapy Drugs

When an award-winning health columnist for one of the biggest newspapers in the country got breast cancer, she went to one of the best hospitals in the world.

The Boston Globe’s Betsy Lehman, of all people, wound up dead because of a huge mistake at the DanaFarber Cancer Institute, of all places.

The fatal mistake, disclosed Thursday by the Globe, was the latest in a series of blatant medical errors that have hurt the reputation of some of America’s best hospitals and alarmed patients.

Lehman’s heart failed after she was given four times the maximum safe dosage of a highly toxic drug during chemotherapy. She was nearing the end of three months of treatment.

At least a dozen doctors, nurses and pharmacists overlooked the error for four days while Lehman continued to receive an overdose of cyclophosphamide, and a four-fold overdose of another drug meant to shield her from side effects.

“She was dealing with horrendous symptoms,” Lehman’s husband, Robert Distel, a scientist at Dana-Farber, told the Globe. “I guess it was called mucositis. The whole lining of her gut from one end to the other was shedding. She was vomiting sheets of tissue. They said this was the worst they’d ever seen. But the doctors said this was all normal.”

Lehman, a 39-year-old mother of two, died Dec. 3. An autopsy found no visible signs of cancer in her body, indicating that the treatment had worked, the Globe reported.

The mistake wasn’t discovered until Feb. 13, after clerks went through records.

Just two days before Lehman’s death, a 52-year-old woman was a victim of the same mistake. She was rushed into intensive care with serious heart damage and remains hospitalized.

The cancer research and treatment center said human error was the only explanation.

“We accept absolutely full responsibility for these tragedies,” Dana-Farber physician-in-chief Dr. David M. Livingston said Thursday. “Every doctor here is humbled by this. Every doctor feels the sense and the gravity of these tragedies.”

The 48-year-old hospital, which treats 9,000 people a year, is negotiating a settlement with Lehman’s family.

Lehman joined the Globe in 1982 and began her “Health Sense” column in 1986. She wrote about new treatments and other scientific developments, doctors’ attitudes toward patients and patients’ fears of hospitals.

She wrote about breast cancer but not her own illness.

In a letter she wrote to a colleague in May, Lehman complained that a doctor at Dana-Farber was “cold and rotten” to her, the Globe said.

Two doctors involved in Lehman’s case have been assigned to desk jobs until two investigations are completed.