I recently evaluated a failure to diagnose a recurrence of breast cancer case involving a woman who'd been diagnosed with stage IIIB breast cancer. When she was diagnosed years earlier, she underwent a bilateral mastectomy and was told she required chemotherapy because of the advanced stage of her cancer. She religiously had chemotherapy treatments and continued to follow with her oncologist every six months, as instructed. Four years after originally being diagnosed, she began to experience significant deep pain in her bones and throughout her body. Further evaluations revealed the cancer had recurred despite the chemotherapy treatments. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with advanced metastatic stage IV cancer. Her prognosis is not good.

Although the statistics for achieving a five-year survival rate following the initial diagnosis of stage IIIB cancer was not ideal, she believed that she lost the opportunity to have the recurrence caught earlier.

Patients who lose the opportunity for successful treatment or a successful outcome may have a viable claim if we can show that earlier treatment would have altered the outcome and the damages would be different.

In this case however, we were unable to show through medical expert review, that this woman's treatment or outcome would have been significantly different had her doctor recognized the recurrence at an earlier point in time. Importantly, the recurrence was found, not within the breast area that had long since been removed, but in distant sites and in distant organs.

Why do I tell you this? Because if you believe that you have suffered a delay in diagnosis of your cancer, these are just a few of the things that an experienced trial attorney looks at to evaluate whether or not your case may be worthwhile to pursue.

To learn more about how medical malpractice and breast cancer cases work here in the state of New York, I encourage you to explore my educational website. If you have legal questions, pick up the phone and call me since I can answer your legal questions at 516-487-8207 or by e-mail at [email protected]. I welcome your call.