Doctors at the Odense University Hospital refrained from operating a 65-year-old woman with pancreatic cancer, noting as a reason in her medical journal that she was ‘slightly retarded’.

Six months later, the woman was re-admitted to hospital in a serious condition, with her cancer having spread so much that it was not possible to operate. She died six months later.

“She was never given a chance because she was retarded,” the woman’s sister Susanne Uhre-Prahl says, adding she felt that her sister received second class treatment.

Politiken has studied the journal concerned, showing that it took three months from the time when a scan raised suspicions of cancer, to when the woman was examined at the surgical department. That examination concluded that there was a ‘suspicion of a small tumour’.

Clinical guidelines call for an operation to be offered, but the consultant physician decided not to do so.

“The reason that steps are not taken for an immediate operation is that the patient is slightly retarded,” the journal says.

“That is outrageous. You cannot use that as a reason. Everyone has the right to treatment,” says Sytter Kristensen, chairwoman of the Association for the Mentally Challenged.

The Odense chief surgeon says that he cannot comment on a concrete case. The department has, however, invited relatives to a meeting to discuss the issue.

“In general I can say that we do not reject retarded patients,” Chief Surgeon Jesper Durup says.

Sytter Kristensen says she does hear from relatives that mentally challenged people do not get the same treatment as others.

“If a mentally challenged person, for example, has cancer, it can be difficult to explain the pain and side-effects that can result from treatment. So the doctor thinks, perhaps, it’s a shame for the patient to go through the treatment. I think it happens. Not often, but there are examples,” she says.

FACEBOOK – Follow Politiken’s News in English