Jury Finds Doctors Liable For Misinterpreting Mammograms And Awards Patient $12 Million

The mammogram is a key tool available to doctors to diagnose a woman's breast cancer

while it is still in the early stages, and in so doing saving the lives of these patients. Yet the mammogram is merely as effective as the physician who interprets it. When an error is made in the interpretation of a mammogram it could holdup the diagnosis of the patient's cancer. In the course of this time, the cancer might become advanced. By getting to a late stage, the patient has a diminished five year survival rate. Consequently the probability of her dying of the cancer increase substantially.

As an example, look at the documented lawsuit of a woman who went in for a routine mammogram and was told that there was no evidence of cancer. Approximately two years afterward, the patient underwent another mammogram. This mammogram was read as displaying no change to the dilated duct from the previous mammogram. However, the earlier mammogram had not revealed a dilated duct and thus the doctors did nothing to explore the suspicious reverse from the previous, clean, mammogram. Her mammogram was misinterpreted and her cancer was not detected.

When the patient had a subsequent mammogram done at another hospital the following year, the physician who read the mammogram noted several small nodular densities. The physician documented that these remained unchanged from the prior mammograms. Yet, neither of the preceding mammograms had included any nodular densities. Again, her mammogram was misread and again her cancer was not detected.

When the woman was at last diagnosed at a future date, she had advanced breast cancer that had metastasized. It was additionally discovered that the position that had previously been described as a dilated duct was location of the primary tumor. The woman initiated a lawsuit against both physicians and hospitals.

The doctor and hospital that read the third mammogram as revealing small nodular densities payed out an unpublished sum in an amount less that the $2,000,000 available in insurance. The physician and hospital that misread the earlier mammogram would not settle for the full amount of the policy. They were willing to pay only a mere $125,000. The case went to trial where evidence was offered that had the mammogram not been incorrectly interpreted the cancer could have been found while still a Stage 1 cancer, which normally has a 5 year survival rate higher than 90%. The law firm that handled the claim reported that the trial led to an award of $12.0 million.

This is a good matter to consider for several reasons. First, two different mammograms were incorrectly interpreted by two different doctors at two distinct hospitals. Plus both doctors attributed results to earlier mammograms which were actually not present in those earlier mammograms. It is difficult to explain how this might have taken place unless the doctors each compared the mammogram they were examining to a different patients mammogram. But the odds of this happening twice at 2 different hospitals is highly unlikely. But the amount of carelessness that would be needed otherwise is genuinely unexcusable. In this case, the jury appears to have agreed.

by: Joseph Hernandez

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