Missed Breast Cancer Diagnosis

Ohio Medical Malpractice Attorneys | Missed Breast Cancer Diagnosis

In the United States, breast cancer kills one in nine women. The American Cancer Society estimates that 192,370 new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed in 2009 and over 40,000 women were expected to die.

Failure to timely and properly diagnose breast cancer is one of the most common basis for medical malpractice lawsuits.

Advances in medicine and routine mammograms have made early detection of breast cancer possible. Breast cancer discovered in its early stages can frequently be removed with minor surgery or noninvasive treatment and the survival rate is high. If a breast cancer diagnosis is made at a Stage 0 or Stage I, the five-year survival rate is nearly 100 percent.

Delay in proper diagnosis can permit a small tumor to rapidly metastasize – or spread – to other areas, including lymph and bone. Treatment of breast cancer at later stages is more aggressive, more painful, more expensive and less successful. The five-year survival rate for breast cancer that is not diagnosed until Stage IV, is less than 20 percent.

A proper diagnosis can be delayed by a physician’s failure to recognize symptoms of the disease or inaccurate mammogram screening or interpretation. As many as 80 percent of breast cancer patients have had a mammogram that was incorrectly interpreted as negative.