By Register Editorial Staff

Reading the state Supreme Court’s account of what happened to Michelle DiLieto is enough to make you ill, and then very angry.

It started in 1995, when DiLieto went to Dr. Scott Casper at County Obstetrics and Gynecology Group in Branford for treatment of menstrual bleeding and cramping. What followed was a misdiagnosis of cancer, despite a second test showing that DiLieto, then 43, may have had a benign condition.

Casper never inquired about follow-up testing of tissue samples done by the Pathology Department at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Peter E. Schwartz, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Yale, misread the Yale pathology report. He was to perform lymph node surgery after Casper removed DiLieto’s reproductive organs.

The surgery went forward. After Casper was done, Dr. Babak Edraki, a first-year gynecological oncology fellow, was told by Schwartz to proceed without him. Edraki had never done this surgery alone. At the trial of DiLieto’s malpractice lawsuit, Schwartz testified that Yale’s policy forbids a first-year fellow, such as Edraki, from unsupervised surgery except in an emergency. Edraki’s deep incisions caused nerve damage that resulted in unrelenting pain, which DiLieto described as feeling like scissors inside her.

By the time Schwartz showed up in the operating room, further pathology tests showed no sign of cancer. The surgery was stopped.

At this point, the right thing to do was tell DiLieto the truth and apologize. Instead, the doctors lied and Yale University refused to release results of tests on DiLieto’s tissue.

All three physicians — Casper, Schwartz and Edraki — told DiLieto that the cancer had been removed and she was cured. DiLieto did not learn she never had cancer until nearly a year later, when she sought an independent opinion.

The three doctors compounded their lies, and DiLieto’s pain, by telling her she was not a candidate for estrogen therapy because it could cause a recurrence of her cancer. Instead, Casper told her to go shopping to get her mind off the pain.

Further, Casper told DiLieto that Schwartz had performed the lymph node surgery, although he knew it had been done by the inexperienced Edraki.

This case dragged on for years, thanks to Yale and Casper’s appeals. This month, the Supreme Court upheld the award of more than $12 million against Yale, as the employer of Schwartz and Edraki, and Casper. It should have been more; and, this should not be the end of this outrageous example of callous and negligent behavior. Continued...

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Casper still practices in Branford. Schwartz is still at Yale.

A previous jury verdict in the case that cleared Schwartz of malpractice was thrown out in 2003 by the Supreme Court because testimony that supported DiLieto’s lawsuit had been improperly excluded. This month, the high court rejected the claims of Yale and Casper that there was insufficient evidence to support the second jury’s verdict of malpractice.

In response, a university representative said Yale has confidence in all three physicians and believes they met the standard of care for DiLieto and noted legitimate scientific differences of opinion on the pathology reports.

But, someone at the state Department of Public Health’s Practitioner Investigations Unit should read the Supreme Court ruling.

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