Woman Awarded $12 Million For Delay In Cancer Detection Due To 2 Physicians Misreading Her Mammograms
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-08-28 11:39:07 | Word Count: 594
One of the principal tools available to help physicians in saving the lives of women is the mammogram, a test that checks for evidence of possible cancer in the breast, letting physicians to identify the cancer in its early stages. However doctors sometimes misread memmograms by either overlooking an abnormality that is present or interpreting it as noncancerous. If the doctor misreads the mammogram the cancer can be undiscovered until a future mammogram or such time as a lump is found during a breast examination. This holdup might be sufficient time for the cancer to metastasize, decreasing the chances that the patient will be able to keep the breast or survive the cancer.
Look into the reported matter of a woman who had a routine mammogram and was informed that there was no indication of cancer. Approximately 2 years after, the woman underwent another mammogram. This time the mammogram was read as displaying no change to the dilated duct from the earlier mammogram. Yet, the prior mammogram was free of a dilated duct and hence the physicians did nothing to check into the suspicious change from the prior, clean, mammogram. Her mammogram was misinterpreted and her cancer was not detected.
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When she had a subsequent mammogram done at a different hospital the next year, the doctor who read the mammogram noted several small nodular densities. The doctor noted that these had not changed from the past mammograms. But, the two past mammograms contained no evidence of nodular densities. Again, her mammogram was misread and again her cancer was not detected.
Ultimately it was found that your woman did have breast cancer, only by then it was metastatic cancer having already spread. It was additionally found that the spot that had earlier been labelled a dilated duct was location of the primary tumor. The woman pursued a malpractice claim against both doctors and hospitals. The doctor and hospital that read the third mammogram as suggesting small nodular densities payed out an unpublished sum in an amount less that the $2,000,000 available in insurance coverage. The physician and hospital that incorrectly interpreted the previous mammogram refused to settle for the full amount of the policy. They were willing to pay only a mere $125,000. The case proceeded to trial where evidence was presented that had the mammogram not been misread the cancer might have been detected while still a Stage 1 cancer, which typically has a 5 year survival rate well above 90%. The law firm that represented the woman reported that the jury came back with a verdict of $12.0 million.
This claim demonstrates various important points. To begin, two independent mammograms were misread by 2 different physicians at two different hospitals. And the two doctors attributed findings to prior mammograms which were actually not present in those earlier mammograms. It is difficult to figure out how this might have occurred unless the physicians both looked at a different patient's mammogram as the comparison. However the odds of this happening twice at two different hospitals is highly unlikely. Yet the level of carelessness that would be needed otherwise is genuinely unexcusable. The jury appears to have agreed.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an attorney accepting cancer cases. You can learn Find more information about metastasized breast cancer and other cancer matters including metastatic prostate cancer visit the websites
