Parner
Cancer is a scary and serious diagnosis. There are a variety of treatment options that can be pursued if it is caught at an early stage, but the chances for survival or a cure unfortunately usually goes down if it is not diagnosed promptly.
A lot of people place a high degree of trust in the opinion of their doctor, especially when it comes to potentially diagnosing something as life-altering as cancer. It is up to healthcare professionals to accurately review x-rays, medical records, and other scans in order to catch the presence of cancer. Failure to diagnose an existing illness or injury could be grounds for a medical malpractice claim.
Sadly, this is not always the case, and doctors sometime fail to diagnose something as cancer when it actually is. A jury in New York awarded a 40-year old women $15 million dollars in February 2012 after her doctor failed to properly diagnose a lump in her breast as cancer, which later metastasized to her bones. The women’s prognosis at the time was not certain due to the misdiagnosis.
Getting a cancer diagnoses wrong can lead to tumors, damage to organs, and even death. If you or someone you love is suffering because a doctor failed to properly diagnose breast cancer, you have a variety of options.
What Are Some of My Options?
One option is to open up a medical malpractice case. You will want to speak with an experienced medical malpractice attorney to see if you are eligible to open up a case, but they could be filed if there was a lack of follow up to an abnormal exam finding, a failure to conduct appropriate, mammogram testing, or a failure in verifying a patient’s complaints.
An experienced lawyer who takes on a medical malpractice case with these circumstances will often try to make sure that any analysis of patient film or scans is re-created in the court with the suspect areas highlighted, noting how the results were dismissed by the healthcare professional.
The end results of a medical malpractice case can vary widely depending on the amount of negligence and the amount of damages. Those who win a medical malpractice case in New York could be eligible for economic damages like repayment for medial bills, specialist fess, or lost wages. There is also the potential for non-economic damages like compensation for pain and suffering and emotional anguish.
Why Is Breast Cancer Misdiagnosed?
Breast cancer is usually pretty hard to treat. Some misdiagnosis happen when a doctor does not get a complete medical history of a patient and their family, since cancer risks are usually tied to family history. Misdiagnoses also happen when a doctor does not follow up on women’s concerns about their breasts, or does not properly communicate with other healthcare professionals like radiologists or oncologists about potential issues. They can also occur when tests are simply misread or not accurately reported. To ensure you are fairly compensated for injuries that a doctor may have caused you or a loved one, please call us to set up a free consult today.