About 100 patients in South Australia were given false positive results for prostate cancer in a bungle that has now led to the sacking of a key health executive.

Health Minister Jack Snelling demanded an independent inquiry when he found out from the media about the blunder.

The errors in test results since January from SA Pathology were picked up when Adelaide urologist Peter Sutherland ordered fresh testing for some of his patients when they returned concerning results despite already having had their prostate glands removed.

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Dr Sutherland, the senior visiting urologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, said he had as many as 40 patients affected by the mistake and thinks dozens more also got incorrect results.

“Thankfully we repeated the test with other labs and showed it wasn’t correct,” he said.

“[Some patients were] quite distressed and worried about it so there was some real human misery associated with this in some men who were seriously worried they had recurrent cancer.”

At a news conference in Adelaide on Sunday, health officials announced SA Pathology executive director Ken Barr had been sacked and confirmed there would be an independent investigation, as the Minister had demanded.

Central Adelaide local health network chief executive Julia Squire said the public should continue to have confidence in SA Pathology’s services.

“Sometimes things don’t always work to plan in health services, we know that, but it’s really important that people feel confident when things don’t go right that they know about it and that those issues are identified and we deal with it appropriately,” she said.

Mr Snelling said he was furious about his department SA Health’s handling of the matter.

“I don’t have an enormous amount of confidence in what I’ve been told until such time as there is an independent investigator comes in and properly briefs me on what’s happened,” he said.

“This is the sort of thing that should be being communicated up to me and I’m extraordinarily frustrated that it wasn’t.

“I’m determined to get to the bottom of it. It does worry me though that there are some people in SA Health who don’t seem to think that they’re answerable to anybody.”