In Texas and across the U.S., those who are diagnosed with cancer will inevitably be fearful as to how the situation will proceed. Getting treatment as soon as possible is generally advisable. For some types of cancer, this can send the disease into remission and save the person’s life. Regardless of the outcome, the diagnosis is the key. While misdiagnosed cancer is often categorized as a person having the disease and being told that they do not, it also works the other way with a person who does not have cancer being told that he or she has it. With these types of doctor errors, a person can be damaged significantly and has the right to seek compensation in a legal filing.
A 51-year-old New York woman found a lump in her breast and went to the doctor for an examination. She was told that she had cancer. Subsequently, she went to the hospital for a mastectomy and her left breast was removed. She was then told that she no longer had cancer. However, in testing after the surgery, the pathologists found that there was no cancer in the tissue that was removed. Before the surgery, the pathologist had misread the results of her biopsy. The surgeon does not work directly for the hospital and the hospital in question has a requirement that its own medical professionals examine pathology reports from the outside, but they apparently did not examine it.
The woman has had a breast reconstruction. She also suffered from blood clots in her lungs and a surgical hernia – both required surgery. The biopsy actually showed that the woman had a benign growth and not cancer. The hospital is investigating what happened and the doctor who performed the surgery is not performing procedures there anymore.
Many legal filings related to misdiagnosis are linked to a medical professional missing a condition, illness or injury and the patient experiencing a worsened condition because of it. In this case, a woman was misdiagnosed as having cancer when she really did not, had surgery to remove her breast, and has been afflicted with several issues in the aftermath. While this might seem to be an isolated incident, medical mistakes happen all too often. In some instances, they result in long-term damage. In others, there is a fatality. Those who believe they have been victimized by a medical mistake should discuss a possible lawsuit with an experienced legal professional.
Source: IJR.com, “Doctors Fess Up to Falsely Diagnosing a Woman With Cancer, But Not Before She Had a Mastectomy,” Jenni Fink, June 19, 2017
