Damages for Failure to Diagnose Breast Cancer

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Early detection is typically critical to successfully fighting breast cancer and obtaining a good outcome. Screenings are usually performed even on healthy women in certain age groups to make sure that the cancer can be caught early and treated before it spreads. Unfortunately, some doctors don't perform critical screening procedures or order key tests. There are also situations in which films or slides are misinterpreted such that diagnosis doesn't occur. The result of this failure to diagnose and treat cancer can be worsened prognosis or even wrongful death. If you are concerned about recovering damages for failure to diagnose breast cancer, you should call the Syracuse medical malpractice lawyers of DeFrancisco & Falgiatano Personal Injury Attorneys.

In most cases, damages for failure to diagnose breast cancer are compensatory. A jury may account for both economic and noneconomic losses in a damages award. Economic losses are tangible losses, often documented, such as medical bills, emergency expenses, medical equipment and medication, replacement services, and rehabilitation.

Noneconomic losses are intangible losses. They can vary dramatically depending on the extent to which your attorney has explored the full scope of losses you sustained due to a failure to diagnose breast cancer and is able to present it persuasively to a jury. Items of noneconomic loss may include pain and suffering, mental anguish, lost earning capacity, and loss of consortium.

The extent and severity of your injuries will determine the quantity of damages a jury is likely to award. Where you were seriously or irreparably harmed by a failure to diagnose breast cancer, your damages are likely to be significantly more than if there was only a slight increase in expenses due to the failure. For example, if your primary care physician failed to inform you about mammogram findings and your breast cancer advanced spread to other parts of your body such that your prognosis is poor and you need expensive and painful treatments you would not have needed but for your doctor's failure to inform you, you will likely be able to recover the costs of treating the advanced breast cancer, along with damages for pain you suffered and wages you lost because you had to undergo expensive, combined systemic therapies like chemotherapy, immunotherapy, hormonal therapy, and targeted therapy, and could not work.

Failure to diagnose breast cancer can be the result of a provider's decision not to perform a diagnostic mammogram, failure to perform or interpret an ultrasound, failure to analyze a breast biopsy, failure to monitor breast tissue abnormalities, decision not to talk with a patient's other physicians to ensure proper treatment, and failure to inform a patient of a mammogram's results. In some cases, there are issues with the mammogram itself. When we pursue damages on your behalf in civil court, we may be able to recover damages if we can show by a preponderance of the evidence that you suffered certain damages as a result of your health care provider's failure to diagnose breast cancer and that this failure constituted a departure from the professional duty of care owed by doctors in the same specialty in Syracuse. Preponderance of the evidence simply means it is more likely than not an element exists.

When your loved one dies because of a failure to diagnose breast cancer, you may be able to recover damages for wrongful death. In New York, you are limited to recovering pecuniary losses in these types of suits. Damages could include funeral and burial expenses, financial support, lost inheritance, reasonable health care expenses, conscious pain and suffering your loved one experienced because of the final illness, value of parental nurturing and care, and value of support and services.

If you need to retain counsel because you were harmed due to a failure to diagnose breast cancer, call the tenacious Syracuse medical malpractice lawyers of DeFrancisco & Falgiatano Personal Injury Attorneys. We seek best results for victims of cancer malpractice and their families in Canandaigua, Lowville, Rochester, Utica, Auburn, Ithaca, Watertown, Herkimer, Oswego, Wampsville, Lyons, Cooperstown, Oneida, Binghamton, Elmira, Buffalo, Albany, and all of Upstate New York. Complete our online form or call us at 833-200-2000 for a free consultation.