Medical Malpractice Lawyers

A Cancer Misdiagnosis Tragedy

It’s a tragic case that is all too familiar to a cancer misdiagnosis attorney in Cleveland. A 32-year old mother was told the lump in her breast was just a blocked milk duct, only two months after giving birth. Doctors told her the lump would “go away when I had the baby,” Anna Alessandro, of Stockton-on-Tees, England, told TeessideLive.

Incurable Bone Cancer

A few months later the lump was still there. When she went back to the specialist, doctors discovered that the cancerous lump had spread to the lymph nodes under her arm, two vertebrae, and her sternum. A few months later, the cancer spread to her bones. Alessandro has been told it’s incurable.

She urges all women to do self-checks to protect themselves.

“The girls will know what happened to me but what can explain cancer to a 4-year-old?” Alessandro told Metro News. “I have said to Ashley I am probably not going to be here at the age when the girls will have to check their breasts but make sure they check them. I never checked my breasts, it isn’t something that is brought up for younger women. I want women to check their breasts more and if there is a problem go to their [doctor] and don’t take no for an answer.”

If you believe your cancer has been misdiagnosed and wish to consider your legal options – we encourage you to contact a Linton Law Firm cancer misdiagnosis attorney in Cleveland today for a free consultation.

Cleveland Cancer Misdiagnosis Attorney: One Woman’s Story and the Trauma of Medical Errors

Ask many of the clients of our cancer misdiagnosis attorney in Cleveland – the trauma of a cancer misdiagnosis can often seem as if “you’ve been thrown to the wolves,” even if the wolves turn out to be a medical mistake. Having limited time left to your life and saying goodbye to loved ones, is the definition of trauma, even if it turns out you are actually perfectly healthy.

Such was the experience of Jan Scott, who had been misdiagnosed with terminal lung cancer. In June, she was told the cancer was far too advanced for chemotherapy or radiotherapy and that she had five months to live. She flew her three grandchildren to Dunedin from Australia for a final visit to say goodbye and began planning her funeral.

Yet she felt no physical pain. With the help of a hospice doctor, she sought further tests and had a PET scan, which ended up revealing no cancer.

The hospital even sent Scott a letter to minimize the impact of the mistake by saying she lived with the misdiagnosis for only a few weeks, when in fact it was months, she said.

An Unapologetic Medical System

At the very least, she’d like an apology.

”I would like an apology more than anything,” Scott told the Otago Daily Times. ”I just want a bit of closure on the whole unfortunate case. All he actually said to me was: ‘We do make mistakes’.”

Scott was fortunate to be on the healthy side of a cancer misdiagnosis. Many others are not so lucky, and the error can prove fatal. If you have been the victim of a cancer misdiagnosis, contact our Cleveland cancer misdiagnosis attorney for a free consultation.

Cleveland Cancer Misdiagnosis Attorney: Why a Second, Third, Even Fourth Opinion May Help To Save Your Life

What is the cost of assuming your doctor knows best? Everything, literally, can be on the line when a doctor makes his or her diagnosis. And yes, as our cancer misdiagnosis attorney in Cleveland will tell you, getting a second opinion, even if the diagnosis is positive, can save your life.

Consider this: 40,000 to 80,000 deaths occur in the U.S. from diagnostic error, and as many as 17 percent of diagnoses are inaccurate, according to a 2015 diagnostic report from The National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine).

Not detecting cancer early enough kills. It’s as simple as that.

“Making the final diagnosis is the doctor’s responsibility,” Dr. Vinita Parkash, a professor of pathology at the Yale School of Medicine, assesses. “The doctor pulls together all the pieces of information, including history, signs, symptoms and test results, to name the disease that is the cause of the patient’s malady. It is that label, that diagnosis, which will accompany the patient through her health care journey and determine what will happen to her.”

Escalating Medical Complexity, Increases Risk

What is worrisome is the fact that misdiagnosis is likely on the rise in an age of increasing complexity and evolving medical approaches.

“Doctors face increasingly higher caseloads and administrative burdens,” Dr. Parkash points out. “Keeping pace with changes in medical knowledge is ever more challenging; it is estimated that medical knowledge will double every 73 days in 2020.”

So by all means, get a second opinion, or three or four, even if the results come back benign. That’s advice from our Cleveland cancer misdiagnosis attorney that may very well save your life. Trust us. Your family will thank you.

Cancer Misdiagnosis Attorney Cleveland: Michigan Woman Has Unnecessary Double Mastectomy

A Michigan woman had a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy she didn’t need, because of a cancer misdiagnosis.

As our cancer misdiagnosis attorney in Cleveland will point out, incorrect diagnoses where there isn’t really cancer can be a serious health issue, altering lives irrevocably on the basis of faulty data.

Colleen Hanna had breast pain in October of 2012. An ultrasound and mammogram came back normal, but a blood test indicated she was BRCA positive.

As ABC12.com reports:

“The BRCA gene test is a blood test that uses DNA analysis to identify harmful mutations in either one of the two breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2. A woman who tests positive is more susceptible to developing breast and ovarian cancer. Doctors recommended Hanna have a double mastectomy, the removal of both breasts, to reduce the risk that she would develop breast cancer.”

Upon doctor recommendation, Hanna had a hysterectomy in May 2014.

The problem? The BRCA test actually never happened, and the results were falsified. Hanna had a BRCA test done in 2016, which came back negative.

And now she’s permanently disfigured as a result of the erroneous diagnosis.

Hanna is suing four medical institutions, including Mid Michigan Physicians Group in Midland, and five doctors for negligence and fraud.

“Unbelievable carelessness, and arrogance, the doctors just proceeding on, and can’t imagine a doctor not looking at a, at least a report of an x-ray before doing surgery on somebody. They didn’t do this at all,” said Hanna’s attorney Victor Mastromarco.

Why Our Cleveland Misdiagnosis Lawyer Always Recommends a Second Opinion

Want some free advice from a cancer misdiagnosis lawyer in Cleveland? Always get a second opinion when it comes to serious medical conditions, especially cancer. A recent analysis found that more than 20 percent of all diagnoses are incorrect.

An analysis at the Mayo Clinic found that only 12 percent of the people who asked specialists at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to review their cases had received correct diagnoses. The rest received diagnoses considered only partly accurate according to the Mayo doctors’ evaluations.

Fatal Errors in Judgment

Needless to say, mistakes left uncorrected can be devastating and oftentimes deadly. Previous analysis found that 10 percent of all hospital deaths are the result of a misdiagnosis.

“Diagnostic error is an area where we need more research, more study and more information,” said James Naessens, a professor of health services research at the Mayo Clinic, who led the study. “The second opinion is a good approach for certain patients to figure out what’s there and to keep costs down.”

So take the recommendation of your cancer misdiagnosis lawyer in Cleveland. Listen to your doctor, but then receive a second opinion. Having more opinions to weigh in on serious medical matters is good for your health.

Is Overdiagnosis Reason Enough to Call a Cancer Misdiagnosis Attorney in Cleveland?

A new study links mammograms to overdiagnosis of cancer. In the experience of our Cleveland cancer misdiagnosis attorney, overdiagnosis can in some ways be just as dangerous as misdiagnosis.The study linked routine mammogram screening to over-diagnosis of non-aggressive tumors, identifying tumors unlikely to be fatal without curbing the diagnosis of advanced cancer stages.

Better safe than sorry, right? Actually, no.

“Overdiagnosis means that healthy women get unnecessary breast cancer diagnoses,” Dr. Karsten Juhl Jorgensen, lead scientist in the study, told Fox News. “A breast cancer diagnosis is a life-changing event for the woman and her family, with substantial implications for their quality of life. It also leads to overtreatment with surgery, radiotherapy and sometimes chemotherapy – we know these treatments have serious, sometimes lethal, consequences.”

No Link for Advanced Cases

The study compared screening results over a single time period of two regions of Denmark. One offered biennial mammography for women aged 50 to 69, and one that didn’t. The study examined data on more than 1.4 million Danish women aged 35 to 84 from 1980 to 2010. Screening wasn’t linked to a lower incidence of advanced cancer cases.

So should women just forgo mammogram screening? Not exactly. The researchers suggested that would depend on age and family history. At best, however, results would be better taken with a grain of salt.

If you feel you may have been overdiagnosed, you might consider talking to one of our cancer misdiagnosis attorneys in Cleveland. We offer free consultations..

Cleveland Cancer Misdiagnosis Lawyer: 1 in 71 Cases Misdiagnosed

Most people are surprised by the statistics. But for a Cleveland cancer misdiagnosis lawyer, the stats, while alarming, prove why litigation is necessary in holding medical professionals accountable for their diagnostic mistakes. In the right direction, a cancer misdiagnosis might be a relief from a living nightmare. In the wrong direction, a misdiagnosis could very well prove to be a death sentence.

Researchers at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore found that one out of every 71 cases was misdiagnosed, based on the tissue samples they studied from 6,000 people across the country. Moreover, up to one in five cases was misclassified.

“That can change whether a patient gets no treatment, vs. surgery, vs. radiation,” Dr. Jonathan Epstein of The Johns Hopkins Hospital told ABC News.  “If they get surgery or radiation, which type?”

Part of the problem is that despite medical technology advances, the diagnosis pretty much comes down to a judgment call.

“We really still make the diagnosis pretty much the way we did for the last 50 years,” Dr. Leonard Zwelling of the MD Anderson Cancer Center told ABC News. “It has to come down to looking at a piece of the tumor on a slide by a pathologist.”

Bottom line, be certain to always secure a second opinion. And if you have been the victim of a misdiagnosis, consult a Cleveland cancer misdiagnosis lawyer. Medical accountability matters. People’s very lives depend on it.

An Inspiring Story of Survival from the Files of a Cancer Misdiagnosis Attorney in Cleveland

Here’s an inspiring story from the news clips of a cancer misdiagnosis attorney in Cleveland:

A Columbus local woman who suffered from acute myeloid leukemia, a rare and aggressive blood cancer, was misdiagnosed and told she had Crohn’s disease.

At 23, Leeanne Hester suffered from chronic fatigue, stomach nausea and unexplained weight loss. Since her blood counts weren’t recovering, she knew it couldn’t be Crohn’s. Close to finishing her Master’s degree in Public Health at George Washington University , she credits her own education for giving her the skills to pursue her own advocacy.

“I cannot emphasize how important it is to advocate for yourself in our healthcare system,” she told CNN. “I didn’t shy away from asking questions and pushing for answers, because I knew something wasn’t right with my body. I even had to call and remind one of my specialists that I needed to schedule a follow up appointment. Had I waited even a month or two, it may have been too late.”

A bone marrow biopsy revealed the cancer. She faced the prospect of five years of survival, at best, unless she had a bone marrow transplant.

Fortunately, a donor was found – a 22-year-old man in Israel named Evgeny Galinsky. Hester survived and recovered, and even invited Galinsky to her wedding, where the two finally met face to face.

Today she’s happily married. Her full recovery is a great inspiration to the clients of a cancer misdiagnosis attorney in Cleveland.

From the Desk of a Cancer Misdiagnosis Attorney in Cleveland: When Cancer is Misdiagnosed by an Entire Medical Community

Sometimes an entire type of tumor can be misdiagnosed by the medical community for decades. In this case of cancer misdiagnosis, an attorney in Cleveland turned out not to be necessary. In fact, it’s good news for nearly 10,000 of the 65,000 thyroid cancer patients that are diagnosed with the disease in the US every year.

The New York Times recently reported that a panel of doctors decided that a type of thyroid cancer historically classified as cancer is not actually cancer at all. They have downgraded the condition, sparing thousands of patients the removal of their thyroid, radioactive treatments and regular checkups for the rest of their lives. It turns out the identified tumor is not actually a threat.

“The reclassified tumor is a small lump in the thyroid that is completely surrounded by a capsule of fibrous tissue,” the New York Times explained. “It’s nucleus looks like a cancer but the cells have not broken out of their capsule, and surgery to remove the entire thyroid followed by treatment with radioactive iodine is unnecessary and harmful, the panel said. They have now renamed the tumor. Instead of calling it ‘encapsulated follicular variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma,’ they now call it ‘noninvasive follicular thyroid neoplasm with papillary-like nuclear features,’ or NIFTP. The word ‘carcinoma’ is gone.”

Is it a case for a cancer misdiagnosis attorney in Cleveland? Probably not, but it certainly is a relief to the patients and families who can rest assured knowing this particular tumor is not actually cancer at all.

Why Doctors Should Listen to the Patients and Clients of a Cancer Misdiagnosis Lawyer in Cleveland

What can doctors do to prevent cancer misdiagnosis? As any cancer misdiagnosis lawyer in Cleveland will tell you, the answer is simple: listen. Pay attention to the patient and actually hear what they are trying to say. They may not have a fancy medical degree, but they know what hurts.

That’s the advice of a new report published this past fall by the Institute of Medicine. “Patients are central to the solution,” Dr. John Ball of the American College of Physicians told the AP.

Further, doctors sought for second and third opinions should listen to each other and communicate when errors occurred.

“We don’t expect the doctor to have all the answers in their brain. Nobody could or should,” Dr. Christine Cassel, president of the National Quality Forum, said in the report.

And ego should be checked at the door in the interest of the patient.

“This is not about blame. It’s about understanding how errors arise and what we can do to prevent them,” said Dr. Mark Graber of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, which prompted the IOM study.

If you believe your cancer has been misdiagnosed, consider your legal options. Contact a Linton Law Firm cancer misdiagnosis lawyer in Cleveland today for a free consultation.