Washington Failure To Diagnose Cancer

Jury awards $3.5 million in "failure to diagnose" cancer medical ...

A Texas jury has awarded a $3.5 million medical malpractice award to the family of a young woman, Melissa Hendricks, who died of cancer finding that her physicians were negligent in not diagnosing her cancer. Because of Texas law, the award will be reduced to $1.5 million which will be shared among the woman's family including her father, husband and two young children.

According to an article in the Denton Record-Chronicle , Melissa Hendricks, who was 33 at the time, discovered a bump on her head. When the bump was still there after a month she went to Highland Family Medical Center where Dr.Stephen Glaser she misdiagnosed as a sebaceous cyst is not cancerous. A week later when the physician's assistant Jason Glaser Maris, removed the cyst, he did not send it to a lab for analysis.

A year later, a lesion of the Hendrick returned and saw Dr. Hendricks Jeffrey Charney, a surgeon, who chose not to remove the lesion because Hendricks was pregnant at the time. When she returned later, the lesion had increased considerably and Charney was diagnosed with sarcoma. Hendricks died less than a year after cancer diagnosis.

The jury found that both doctors were negligent and awarded each 45% of the blame.The jury awarded Hendricks 10% of the blame because she waited a month before seeing a doctor even though she knew that her family had a history of cancer.

It is essential that cancer is a diagnosis most early stages because early detection allows a broader range of treatment options and patients have a better prognosis and chance of recovery.

In Washington, a health care provider is negligent if it "failed to exercise the degree of care, skill and learning expected of a health care provider reasonably prudent."If Hendricks, it was reasonable to expect that the lesion biopsied the first time he was abducted.

This information is provided by Washington Injury Attorney blog, a service of the Farber Law Group. We represent people who have been severely injured by medical practices and the families of those who died. With our help, you can recover compensation for your damages. Washington state has a wrongful death statute that allows a family to file a civil suit on behalf of their dead relative.

Contact The Farber Law Group at 1-800-244-9087 or the Attorney hgfarber @.

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