Cases reprinted with permission from Medical Malpractice Verdicts, Settlements and Experts, Lewis Laska, Editor, (800) 298-6288.
A 52-year-old woman had a long history of abdominal pain and adhesions. In September 2005, after five years of adhesion-type abdominal pain, she underwent removal of her ovaries and fallopian tubes. A prior laparoscopic adhesiolysis had failed to resolve the pain. After the surgery, a tissue sample was sent to Dr. B., who diagnosed a “benign serous papillary tumor with psammoma bodies.”
In early 2007, the abdominal pain returned. The woman’s primary care physician immediately sent her for a series of MRIs over the next eight months. These revealed very minor changes in the lower pelvis. Ultimately, another diagnostic laparoscopy was performed, which revealed primary peritoneal cancer.
Staging surgery was performed by Dr. G., who testified at trial that she found cancer “everywhere” in the peritoneal cavity. After personally comparing pathology slides from the 2008 surgery with the tissue from the 2005 surgery, Dr. G. concluded that the tissue was virtually identical and the patient had cancer in 2005.
Dr. G. gave the woman a copy of Dr. B.’s 2005 pathology report with the advice to see a lawyer. Dr. G., however, did not provide a copy of the pathology report she had received from a gynecologic pathology expert, who had reviewed both tissue samples and concluded that Dr. B.’s diagnosis was reasonable.
The patient was ultimately diagnosed with low-grade primary peritoneal carcinoma, which was thought to have originated in her ovaries and fallopian tubes. She claimed that Dr. B.’s failure to diagnose cancer or borderline cancer in 2005 reduced her chance of survival by almost 70%. The defendant claimed that an earlier diagnosis would not have changed the plaintiff’s prognosis.
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