Toddler Suffered from Permanent Injuries Due to Pediatrician’s Failure to Diagnose Brain Tumor

Jaehyun Oh obtained a significant settlement on behalf of a toddler who tragically suffered from permanent injuries due to his physician’s failure to timely diagnose a brain tumor near the pituitary gland despite the fact that he was exhibiting clear symptoms of the tumor’s presence. As a result of the delayed diagnosis, our client developed permanent physical disabilities which are expected to persist into his teenage and adult years.

From the ages of two to five years old, our client began to exhibit irregular symptoms including height stagnation and vision loss. Within those three years, our client’s growth rate exponentially declined from the 90th percentile to the 50th percentile, and finally, to the 10th percentile while his weight remained the same. In addition, he also complained of symptoms including head and neck pain. His providers failed to investigate the cause of these symptoms, allowing them to persist and go untreated for three years.  

Unfortunately, our client wasn’t referred to a specialist for diagnostic testing until his school nurse noticed that he had a significant vision impairment. She immediately suggested that he receive diagnostic testing which showed that something was impairing his optic nerve. Further testing revealed that the source of the impairment was a tumor near his pituitary gland, which was also the cause of all of our client’s irregular symptoms. Notably, three days prior to visiting his school nurse, one of the defendant doctors negligently recorded our client’s vision as normal.

Due to the delayed diagnosis, the tumor was able to grow for three years, eventually becoming large enough to obstruct both his optic nerve and pituitary gland, which is responsible for producing many important hormones, including the growth hormone in children. As a result, our client had to undergo two invasive surgeries and radiation therapy as a young child, and he currently suffers from permanent blindness in his right eye.

The Jacob Fuchsberg Law Firm filed a lawsuit on behalf of the child and his family alleging that our client’s rapid decline in growth rate without a corresponding decline in weight was clearly indicative of a hormonal deficiency. The lawsuit further alleged that our client should have promptly received a workup, including hormonal testing and an endocrinology referral, as soon as his physicians first noticed alarming symptoms.

Ms. Oh also successfully defeated Defendants’ motion for summary judgment with support from an expert who opined that the defendants “missed clear opportunities” to make the proper diagnosis and that our client’s symptoms would have been “stark and obvious to any reasonable medical provider.

No one’s child should ever have to suffer permanent injuries due to a pediatrician’s negligence or delayed diagnosis. If your child received a delayed brain tumor diagnosis, contact a New York Delayed Brain Tumor Diagnosis attorney today to discuss your rights.