Woman Receives Delayed Breast Cancer Diagnosis Due to Negligent Primary Care Physician and Radiologist

Kevin Lee, Esq., obtained a significant settlement in a complicated case involving a 42-year-old woman who received a delayed stage III cancer diagnosis due to her primary care physician’s failure to assess her symptoms and a radiological misread.

Our client presented to her primary care physician over a year before receiving her cancer diagnosis, complaining of a mass the size of a marble in her breast. Our client’s primary care physician ordered a mammogram to assess the mass, which revealed that the mass contained some fluid. Since the mass contained some fluid, the radiologist incorrectly concluded that the mass was cystic and malignant and failed to aspirate the mass or order follow-up imaging. Unfortunately, as a result of the radiological misread, our client’s mass was not properly diagnosed the first time she received imaging, allowing the cancer to continue to grow.

Notably, although the radiologist alleged that the mass was not cancerous, our client’s primary care physician still had a duty to order further diagnostic imaging or an aspiration to determine the cause of the mass.

Over the next few months, our client’s mass continued to grow, and our client also began to report alarming clinical symptoms to her primary care physician, which further warranted additional imaging or a biopsy. Within eight months, the mass had grown to the size of a golf ball and was causing sleep discomfort, but our client’s primary care physician still neglected to do anything, including even performing a breast exam.

Unfortunately, our client was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer just over a year after her initial presentation and had to undergo a partial mastectomy and aggressive chemotherapy as a result of the delayed diagnosis. Furthermore, our client continues to suffer from fatigue, mobility issues, and permanent scarring and will require lifelong cancer monitoring due to her physician’s negligence.

Mr. Lee successfully argued that our client’s symptomatic breast lump was highly irregular for an otherwise healthy woman and should have been diagnosed properly.