Harvard Doctor to Pay $1.8M in Negligence Suit

A Middlesex County Superior Court jury last week found a Harvard surgeon negligent in the treatment of a 33-year-old patient who died of cancer and awarded $1.8 million to her family and estate.

Medical experts who testified against Dr. Chester B. Rosoff, associate professor of surgery, said during the eight-day trial that his patient, the late Phyllis Thrope of Arlington, probably would have survived if Rosoff had done more to diagnose her disease.

Thrope died on October 31 of complications from her cancer.

Rosoff, who worked for the Harvard Community Health Plan (HCHP) at the time, examined Thrope in January of 1984 and again in February 1984 when she complained of a lump in her breast.

Rosoff, who is a teaching doctor at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Hospital, said in court that he examined Thrope twice in three weeks and felt no lump.

That was after Dr. Luke Gillespie '33, who referred Thrope to Rosoff, had examined Thrope and found a lump in her breast.

Nearly a year later, Roger L. Christian, a Harvard instructor in surgery, and Lawrence N. Shulman, a Harvard instructor in medicine, both of whom also worked at HCHP, detected breast cancer which had slowly begun to spread throughout Thrope's body, according to their testimony at the trial.

Shulman testified that if Thrope had been properly diagnosed and treated in January of 1984, she probably would have survived her cancer.

Rosoff chose not to administer a biopsy or mammogram, which are common diagnostic procedures.

The jury found Rosoff's negligence a "proximate cause of [Thrope's] injuries and death."

Although Thrope died before the suit went to trial, her testimony figured prominently in the case.

The jury received a written deposition thatThrope prepared during the advanced stage of herillness and heard excerpts from a journal shebegan keeping after she learned that her cancercould be fatal.

The jury also saw a videotape Thrope recordedhours before she lapsed into unconsciousness forthe last time.

The award will be divided among her husband, asix-year-old son, and a two-year-old daughter inaddition to her estate.

Albert P. Zabin and Marcia J. Allar, attorneysfor the plaintiff, argued that Rosoff did not doenough to correctly diagnose her. Allar said thatRosoff based his diagnosis solely on feeling thepatient's breast.

Phyllis J. Kornguth, chief of mammography atthe Yale School of Medicine, and Charles S.Lipson, a New Bedford surgeon, testified thatRosoff should have given Thrope a mammogram, anX-ray exam of the breasts, Allar said.

In an interview this week, Rosoff's lawyer,Barbara H. Buell, said Rosoff had no reason toadminister a mammogram.

"When he examined her, she had no symptoms ofanything wrong with her," Buell said.

"She had a very diffuse kind of cancer, fromthe pathological report," she said, adding thatsuch breast cancer is often not accompanied bylumps.

Buell said it is not standard procedure to givemammograms to women of Thrope's young age. Thefact that Thrope was pregnant at the time and thepossibility that radiation from the X ray could beharmful contributed to Rosoff's decision not toadminister a mammogram, she said.

Administrators at Beth Israel Hospital refusedto comment on the case.

Middlesex County Superior Judge Katherine L.Izzo, who presided over the trial, yesterdayupheld the award, according to Allar