12 Million Jury Award For Patient When Doctors Misdiagnosed Her Breast Cancer

12 Million Jury Award For Patient When Doctors Misdiagnosed Her Breast Cancer

The mammogram is a primary tool available to physicians to find a female patient's breast cancer while it is still in the early stages, thus saving the lives of these patients. Still, the mammogram is only as reliable as the physician who interprets it. If the doctor misreads the mammogram the cancer can be undiagnosed until a later mammogram or such time as a lump is noticed by a breast examination. In the course of this time, the cancer may become advanced. By getting to a late stage, the woman has a diminished five year survival rate. Consequently the probability of her dying of the cancer go up considerably.

Look into the reported matter of a woman who went in for a routine mammogram and was told that there was no sign of cancer. Around two years after, the woman underwent another mammogram. This mammogram was read as showing no change to the dilated duct from the earlier mammogram. However, the previous mammogram had not revealed a dilated duct and so the physicians did nothing to study the suspicious change from the previous, clean, mammogram. Her mammogram was misinterpreted and her cancer was not detected. When the patient went in for another mammogram at a different hospital the following year, the physician who read the mammogram described several small nodular densities. The physician noted that these remained unchanged from the prior mammograms. However, neither of the previous mammograms had included any nodular densities. Once again, her mammogram was misread and again her cancer was not diagnosed.

When the patient was at last diagnosed at a future date, she had stage 4 breast cancer that had metastasized. It was also discovered that the spot that had earlier been described as a dilated duct was location of the primary tumor. She filed a medical malpractice case against both physicians and hospitals.

The doctor and hospital that read the third mammogram as revealing small nodular densities reached a settlement for an undisclosed sum in an amount less that the $2.0 million available in insurance coverage. The doctor and hospital that incorrectly interpreted the prior mammogram refused to settle for the full amount of the policy, offering only $125,000. The case went to trial where evidence was presented that had the mammogram not been misread the cancer could have been detected while still a Stage 1 cancer, which generally has a 5 year survival rate well above 90%. The law firm that handled the lawsuit reported that the jury came back with a verdict of $12,000,000.

This case illustrates several important points. First, 2 separate mammograms were incorrectly interpreted by two different physicians at two distinct hospitals. And both doctors attributed findings to prior mammograms which were not found in those earlier mammograms. It is tough to figure out how this might have occurred unless the physicians each looked at a different patient's mammogram as the comparison. However the chances of this occurring twice at 2 hospitals is highly unlikely. But the level of negligence that would be needed otherwise is genuinely unexcusable. The jury appears to have agreed.

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