Police called after sample of tissue from woman’s breast goes missing from Hong Kong hospital
Woman undergoes lumpectomy at public hospital, but specimen goes missing after being placed in storage
A sample of tissue from a woman’s breast has gone missing from North District Hospital in Sheung Shui, prompting the facility to report the incident to police.
The 59-year-old woman underwent a lumpectomy on her left breast at the public hospital at about 5pm on Friday, a hospital spokesman said. She had been found to have an atypical ductal hyperplasia – a benign lesion of the breast that indicates an increased risk of breast cancer.
A specimen with a diameter of about 3cm was collected during the operation.
It was put into a bag and sent to the hospital’s radiology department for analysis. It was then immediately sent back to the operating theatre.
At about 7pm, a nurse from the operating theatre received the sample and transferred it to a bottle filled with formalin, a colourless solution used as a preservative.
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She sealed and labelled the bottle before leaving it in a specimen trolley in the theatre. The bottle was then sent to the pathology department and placed in a cold storage facility at about 9am on Saturday.