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Welcome and thank you for joining me. 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 involves a failure to diagnose a brain tumor. What happened? My client was
a home health aide and was taking a patient of hers to a doctor’s appointment in a van.
On the way to the doctor’s appointment, the van was involved in a car accident with
a car – ironically almost directly in front of a hospital. As a result of the car accident,
she was taken across the street to the emergency room where was worked up. They did a CAT scan
of her head, they did a full-body x-ray, they did a whole bunch of other diagnostic tests
to see what was going on with her since she had head trauma. The radiologist – the doctor
who interprets and reads the x-rays and MRIs and CAT scans – read her the CAT scan of
her head. And in fact, read that it was suspicious for a tumor. Unfortunately, that information
never made its way to the emergency room doctor or to anybody else who was caring for the
patient. So what happened was the patient was sent home and told that everything was
fine and OK, and was never told that she had this tumor growing inside of her head. She
began having blurry vision and the vision itself was diminishing and it was getting
very dark. She goes to an eye doctor for an exam and is then sent for an MRI. The MRI
revealed that she had a tumor in her head and now when they went to get the original
MRI and CAT scan results – that were taken only 7 months earlier – from the emergency
room at this hospital where she had gone for this particular car accident, they were able
to see that this tumor was clearly visible on the diagnostic tests that were done. The
problem was nobody communicated that information to the patient so she could get early and
timely treatment. The problem was she had already suffered permanent damage to her eye
and to the optic nerve which controls her eyesight. And 6 or 7 months earlier, she had
no problem with her optic nerve and had perfect vision. So the doctors treating her clearly
told her “Listen, if this had been treated and removed early on, 6 or 7 months ago, you
would have absolutely no problem, no residual.” As it was now, she had limited vision in one
eye. And after bringing a lawsuit, we were able to bring successful compensation for
her. And that’s it for today’s video tip about a failure to diagnose a brain tumor.
It was recognized correctly by the radiologist but nobody bothered to tell the patient about
it while she was in the emergency room or anytime after. That’s it for today’s video.
I want to thank you for joining me. I’m Gerry Oginski, have a great day!