Radiology Malpractice Case: Lung Cancer Misdiagnosis

Radiology is the breach of medicine that involves looking at x-rays. When a doctor takes an x-ray, he is supposed to ensure that the results of the x-ray are properly read. Failure to read an x-ray correctly could result in a misdiagnosis of illness, leading to radiology malpractice cases. In some cases, the misdiagnosis could have severe consequences- such as if your doctor did not properly diagnose you with lung cancer based on his misreading of an x-ray. 

Understanding Medical Malpractice for a Misdiagnosis

Lung cancer is a serious and life threatening illness. As most people know, the earlier cancer is caught and treated, the better chance you have of surviving the diagnosis. If you went to your doctor and he took an x-ray and he missed something on the x-ray that indicated the presence of lung cancer, then your treatment may have been unnecessarily delayed, causing your cancer to spread or worsen. As such, you may have to go through more aggressive treatments--- or your cancer may not be treatable at all.

In order to prove radiology malpractice cases based on a lung cancer misdiagnosis, you need to prove several elements of a medical malpractice tort. Generally, you must prove:

• That your physician was negligent or breached a duty to you in not reading the x-ray properly or not diagnosing the lung cancer. For example, if your doctor was giving you an x-ray for something unrelated and the cancer was very small, perhaps it wasn't negligent because no reasonable doctor would have caught the tiny spot of cancer cells. However, if your doctor was expressly giving you the x-ray to check for signs of lung cancer because you were exhibiting symptoms, and he then missed the cancer, then you may have a much stronger case for negligence. Proving this element of your case all depends on whether a reasonable doctor would have caught the cancer on the x-ray or not.
• That the negligence caused your injury. Lung cancer is a damaging cancer and your doctor can argue that your results would have been the same, no matter what he did. You will need experts to testify that your doctor made things worse or hurt you in some way through his negligence.

Getting Help

Radiology malpractice cases can be somewhat hard to prove and they generally require expert testimony. You should hire a qualified lawyer as soon as you suspect you may have a case so your lawyer can begin to help you collect any evidence you will need to prove your claim.