A well-known local businessman has slammed the hospital and local doctors after they failed to tell him he had cancer following an emergency appendix operation in May, 2003.

As a result, Peter Crisson, pictured right, went seven months without treatment, and while he now appears to be free of the disease, the results could have been fatal.

Mr. Crisson, of Crisson's Jewellers, said he felt “obligated” to take his harrowing experience public in order to make people aware of “major systemic failures” at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital and what he claims was “gross negligence” on the part of his former GPs, Dr. Roger Wong and Dr. Anna Nielsen.

It is understood that the latter two have officially apologised to Mr. Crisson, but his demands for a public admission of negligence from the Bermuda Hospitals Board have so far fallen on deaf ears.

The BHB is refusing to comment on the matter other than to say the complaint was being taken “very seriously” and investigations continue.

Both Dr. Wong and Dr. Nielsen have also declined to give their version of events.

It is understood, however that BHB chairman Jonathan Brewin has already privately admitted the organisation's culpability, having personally approached Mr. Crisson just over two months ago with a secretive compromise deal.

Brandishing a legal contract, Mr. Brewin told Mr. Crisson that the BHB would be willing to publicly apologise for the matter only if he agreed to sign a document promising not to pursue any other legal avenues - an offer Mr. Crisson rejected out of hand.

The Royal Gazette has also learned that any public apology could lead to unthinkable ramifications - the BHB having been informed by Kitson Insurance and its lawyer Allan Doughty at the law firm of Trott & Duncan that such action may result in the cancellation of KEMH's insurance cover.

This story began in late December, 2002 when Mr. Crisson went to his then doctor Dr. Wong complaining of pain in the right side of his belly. The successful jeweller claimed that he asked Dr. Wong whether he thought the pain was coming from his appendix and was told instead that he had a kidney infection.

But five months later Mr. Crisson was admitted to hospital with chronic pain the same location and diagnosed as having appendicitis which required immediate surgery.

He was discharged in late May and told to return in ten days for a check-up, while his appendix was sent to the Department of Pathology for tests.

On his return to the hospital he was examined by Dr. Terrence Elliot and informed that all was well.

Unhappy with Dr. Wong, Mr. Crisson decided to switch to Dr. Nielsen at The Family Practice Group and requested that his medical notes be transferred.

The notes took several months to reach Dr. Nielsen's office and it was not until late December - a full seven months after his appendix operation - that Mr. Crisson was able to read his file and accidentally came across the pathology report.

Neither the operating surgeon at the hospital, Dr. Wong or Dr. Nielsen had informed him that nests of malignant cancers had been found in his appendix.

Mr. Crisson flew straight to the United States where specialists at the New York Presbyterian hospital listened in horrified silence to the events that had transpired.

Luckily however, no further evidence of cancer was found during tests in New York - although he was still forced to undergo six months of chemotherapy and will be tested every year for the next five years to determine whether or not the cancer has spread.

“As a member of this community who has the resources, credibility and of course good reason to help address and correct matters, it would be wrong of me to let this matter go,” Mr. Crisson said.

“I think it would be in everybody's best interest, including the public's, that we work together and I would be remiss not to mention that I believe I have the integrity and ability to get results in other ways. No steps were taken by anyone to ensure that the pathology findings were brought to my attention so that I could attend to it.”

Mr. Crisson said it would be “outrageous” to suggest that anything other than negligence occurred, adding that nobody at KEMH has ever pretended otherwise.

“The very fact that I am even having to ask for an apology suggests to me that at KEMH there is a culture of expediency rather than principle, and of course the patient suffers as a result,” he said.

“I sense a distinct lack of willingness to take responsibility and I do not see the welfare of the patient coming first and foremost until openness, forthrightness and complete honesty prevail.”