Medical Malpractice Series: How a False Cancer Misdiagnosis Leads to Unnecessary Treatment and Suffering (Rob Sickels)

Robert Sickels dives into the critical topic of cancer misdiagnosis and delays in diagnosis. Rob shares his insights into how delays in cancer diagnosis or false cancer diagnoses can lead to devastating consequences for patients and their families. He recounts real-life cases, including one where a mislabeled biopsy slide resulted in unnecessary surgery and emotional trauma for a patient.

Learn about the causes of misdiagnosis, including negligence by healthcare providers, and the importance of early detection. If you or a loved one has experienced a delay in diagnosis or a false cancer diagnosis, Rob explains how the team at Sommers Schwartz can help you seek justice and pursue maximum compensation.

Transcript

Hello, I’m Robert Sickels. I’m a partner at the dynamite law firm of Sommers Schwartz. We have over 70 lawyers, paralegals, nurses, and legal assistants devoted to handling complex personal injury cases, employment matters, and class actions. Our exceptional medical malpractice department is laser-focused on representing victims of medical negligence. For over 50 years, we have achieved outstanding results in courtrooms, not only in Michigan, but in many states around the country.

 I want to talk for a moment about cancer. Probably three of the scariest words in the English language coming from a doctor to a patient are, you have cancer. What is even scarier and more devastating is for a patient to learn the diagnosis should have been made long before it was.

I have very successfully handled scores and scores of cases involving a delay in the diagnosis of cancer.

Delays in diagnosis and delays in the start of treatment of cancer can lead to the spread of the disease throughout the body, requiring more extensive surgical procedures or painful chemotherapy treatments, or even death, all of which could have been avoided with a timely diagnosis.

Delays in diagnoses of cancer occur all too frequently because symptoms are ignored by healthcare providers. Necessary tests are not performed. Or tests that are performed are misread or misinterpreted by a radiologist or a pathologist, or other healthcare provider.

It is well known, the sooner the diagnosis of cancer is made, the better the outcome.

While all too often there is a delay in the diagnosis of cancer, I have also handled many cases where the diagnosis of cancer turned out to be dead wrong, should never have been made in the first place because unnecessary surgeries, unnecessary chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and immeasurable pain and suffering that the patient should never have endured in the first place.

 False positive tests leading to a false diagnosis of cancer occur with amazing frequency. In fact, one study has calculated the number of false positive cancer diagnoses to be over 8 million in the past several years.

Over 8 million patients and their families have suffered fear, worry, anxiety, and depression at the prospect of living with, or worse, dying from cancer for no good reason. This means over 8 million people have undergone invasive treatments, surgical procedures, and or chemotherapy regimens they didn’t need.

Over 8 million people have suffered emotional anguish that should never have occurred. So how can this happen? How can a cancer diagnosis be false all too often?

 Usually, the cause of the false diagnosis of cancer occurs because of a misinterpretation of a biopsy specimen by a pathologist or the misinterpretation of a radiology study by a radiologist.

Interpretations that were so wrong, they were negligent.

 In one case I handled, a woman had a biopsy of her uterus because she had had some spotting between periods. She was told by her ob -gyn. The biopsy showed she had a very aggressive and invasive form of uterine cancer. She told her family there was a grim prognosis. Surgery was scheduled and performed.

Her uterus, ovaries, and fallopian tubes were removed. She was scheduled to undergo radiation treatments and chemotherapy.

After the surgery, the pathologist who examined the organs that were removed found absolutely no evidence of cancer. She asked me to investigate the case. She wanted answers as to how, on God’s green Earth, this could have happened. She had gone through a surgery she didn’t need. She had organs removed that didn’t need to be removed, and why?

How could this happen? She asked me.

 What we discovered once we got into the case was that the slides from her biopsy were mislabeled with the name of another patient who had undergone a uterine biopsy that same day at that same facility. They were mislabeled because of the negligence of a laboratory technician.

 As you can imagine, the case never went to trial. We were able to secure a significant settlement for her, but what we couldn’t do is turn back time before when the mix-up occurred. The scars of the surgery and the emotional scars were permanent, but at least she saw some measure of justice because our investigation and our intervention achieved a significant result.

So, if you or a loved one has suffered as a result of a delay in the diagnosis of cancer or a false cancer diagnosis, the best way to learn whether you have a worthy claim is to reach out to one of us for a free initial consultation. If we determine that a surgeon, a radiologist, a pathologist, or a lab technician were negligent, either causing a delay in diagnosis or leading to a false diagnosis of cancer, we will vigorously pursue the maximum compensation available to you.