Complaint of arm pain ends in death...Delayed diagnosis leads to quadriplegia...more...
The cases in this column are selected by the editors of The Journal of Family Practice from Medical Malpractice: Verdicts, Settlements & Experts, with permission of the editor, Lewis Laska (https://www.triplelpublications.com/product/medical-malpractice-newsletter/). The information about the cases presented here is sometimes incomplete; pertinent details of a given situation therefore may be unavailable. Moreover, the cases may or may not have merit. Nevertheless, these cases represent the types of clinical situations that typically result in litigation.
Malignant mole never made it to pathology
A WOMAN NOTICED A NEW MOLE ON HER LEFT FOOT, which didn’t concern her until 4 years later, when it began to grow, itch, and turn red. She went to her family physician, who decided to remove the mole. After doing so, the doctor told the patient that he’d send it for pathologic inspection and handed it to the assisting nurse, expecting her to prepare it properly for the laboratory.
When the time came to remove the stitches, the patient asked her family physician if a doctor in the medical practice where she worked could take them out. The family physician agreed. The patient didn’t return to her family physician afterward; she transferred to a primary care physician in the office where she worked.
The mole then returned to the patient’s foot, and she requested transfer of her records to the new physician. When the records arrived, they didn’t include a pathology report; it appeared that the mole hadn’t been sent to the pathology lab.
The patient’s physician sent her to a podiatrist, who removed the recurrent mole a little over a year after she first consulted her family physician. The pathology report indicated it was a malignant melanoma.
PLAINTIFF’S CLAIM It was negligent to fail to send the mole to a pathology lab and to fail to notice that a pathology report had not come back. The delay in diagnosis and treatment of the cancer increased the risk of recurrence and other complications.
THE DEFENSE The family physician blamed the procedures of the group, and the group blamed the family doctor.
VERDICT $3.25 million Kentucky verdict.
COMMENT I recently participated as an expert witness (for the defense) in a similar malpractice case in which the defendant did send the mole to pathology. In today’s litigious society, how can we not send every “mole” for pathologic examination?
