Injury: Death from failure to timely diagnose and treat liver cancer
Age of Patient at Injury: 56 years old
Result: $2.1 Million Settlement at Mediation
Court: Philadelphia, PA
Comment: Our client was a successful businessman, husband and father who was being followed for Hepatitis B, a common finding in Korean men. The hospital and doctors who ran the monitoring program performed periodic MRI’s and blood tests to ensure that there was no progression of his disease. Tragically, the patient’s liver were misread for 2 years during which the opportunity to identify and treat the liver cancer was lost. The misdiagnosis was made worse by the fact that his doctor was not following these studies closely enough to notice when the tumors were finally found, resulting in additional delay in his diagnosis. The doctors and hospital argued that the cancer was too advanced to be treated even before it was diagnosed. This is a common defense in failure to diagnose cancer cases but it does not excuse clear medical malpractice which harms a patient. Had the diagnosis been made earlier, this patient was a good candidate for a liver transplant. Our client and his family agreed to Mediation because of the likelihood that he would not live to the conclusion of a trial. Our medical experts were able to clearly show the malpractice in reading and interpreting the MRI’s and the lack of any follow up by the patient’s Doctor. We successfully settled this case at mediation, however, our client tragically died shortly after the settlement, leaving his family to survive him.