Penny Debelle: Expert witness Professor John Gibson says medics should have realised chemotherapy drug was being under-dosed

SOME hard truths are starting to emerge over the chemotherapy bungle which compromised the chances of survival for 10 gravely ill South Australian leukaemia patients, writes PENNY DEBELLE.

Jodi, Kym and Ricki Higham, whose dead father and husband Bronte was one the chemotherapy patients

• Fourth chemo bungle victim dies as coroner’s inquest begins
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SOME hard truths are starting to emerge.

Independent expert Professor John Gibson is a senior clinician from New South Wales, just like the doctors on whom SA’s 10 leukaemia patients pinned their hopes for survival.

Asked a direct question on Tuesday by Deputy Coroner Anthony Schapel about why an experienced clinician would not notice that the chemotherapy drug Cytarabine was being given once a day instead of twice and Professor Gibson had a straight answer.

They should have known, and if someone did make an error it should have been picked up straight away.

“If I made a mistake, for example, I’d probably have three people straight away calling me,” he said. “It’s fail-safe”.

So would a senior doctor like you even need to check the protocol when the regimen for Cytarabine at this phase of treatment was always twice a day around Australian and overseas?

“Probably not, because I’ve been around for long enough,” he said.

An independent expert says RAH clinicians should have known the cancer patients were under-dosed.

That kind of direct clinical evidence does nothing to ease the pain of the families of the four victims of the chemotherapy underdosing scandal who have died.

But it is the furthest we have been down a pathway towards discovering how badly 10 gravely ill patients were let down.

Professor Gibson is at pains not to make direct judgments about the impact of being underdosed on the three victims whose histories he has examined.

He will not, and cannot say with certainty, that the reduced chemotherapy led to a relapse.

But generally speaking, the treatment was sub-optimal. It had the potential not to achieve what it was meant to. In other words, it may not have worked.

This amount of truth has been hard won. Without the courage of patients like the late Chris McRae and Bronte Higham, and Andrew Knox, all of whom trusted The Advertiser with their stories, what we learned on Tuesday would still be SA Health’s closely guarded secret.

— Penny Debelle broke the chemotherapy underdosing bungle story, which was awarded Best News Report at the SA Media Awards last year