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Welcome and thank you for joining me. Come on in. I’m Gerry Oginski, a New York medical
malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer practicing law here in the state of New York.
Today’s video tip is how a failure to diagnose breast cancer cost a doctor 4 and half million
dollars. Now what happened here? A woman went to a doctor complaining of a lump in her breast
and what did the doctor do? They did the right thing. They sent her off for a mammogram.
Unfortunately, the mammogram was not read correctly which she didn’t know at the time.
She was told that the mammogram was fine. She then continued to complain of a lump and
based on physical examination, the doctor told her “Nothing to worry about you just
have cystic breast. You’re having your period. Don’t worry about it. It will be fine.”
Well it wasn’t because she came back again complaining that the lump got bigger. So she
was sent to do the right thing - sent for a biopsy. The problem was during the course
of the biopsy, they got the wrong part of the tissue. They got normal tissue. They didn’t
get the lump they were supposed to and that was read as normal. So here all along, this
patient is told she has no problem, despite the fact that her lump was getting bigger
and bigger. And it wasn’t until much later when somebody finally recognized that she
had stage 4 breast cancer, and when they went back to look at the mammograms and the other
films and the other diagnostic tests that they did, they recognized that there was clearly
evidence of the breast cancer way back earlier when she originally came to them. And if she
had had the right treatment at that time, she could have had a number of options. She
could have had surgically removal of that lump. She could have had chemotherapy and
she could have had radiation. And that certainly would have prolonged her life tremendously;
this was a young woman with a family of three children. Unfortunately for her, by the time
they finally made the diagnosis, there was nothing anybody could do. Her death was a
horrible, agonizing death. And why do I tell you this? Because if you are not getting satisfaction,
as a result of your complaints to your doctor, my recommendation is that you go for a second
opinion to somebody else that may save your life. I’m Gerry Oginski, here in New York.
I want to thank you for joining me. Have a great day!