The 33-year-old father was experiencing mild one-sided facial numbness for which he had an MRI to rule out a stroke…medicalmalpracticelawyers, $2.1M Virginia Medical Malpractice Settlement For Misdiagnosed Nasopharyngeal Cancer.
The plaintiff alleged that there was an incidental finding on the MRI that showed a mass in the nasopharynx that was putting pressure on the facial nerve, which the neuroradiologist failed to report. His numbness worsened over the next year that led to a CT scan that revealed that the mass had grown and had spread to his brain and lymph nodes.
Despite undergoing chemotherapy and proton beam radiation, he suffered a recurrence of cancer with metastasis to his lungs. Subsequent immunotherapy and chemotherapy treatments accomplished remission of the spread of the cancer, but his long-term survival is unlikely.
The defense reportedly included a neuroradiologist and a medical oncologist as experts who were prepared to testify that the defendant neuroradiologist did not breach the standard of care because the finding on the MRI was subtle, the defendant was focused on ruling out a stroke due to an indication of facial numbness, and the tumor had already spread to surrounding structures at the time of the MRI and that the biology of the plaintiff’s cancer was such that it was going to be incurable even if diagnosed and treated a year earlier.
The plaintiff’s experts testified that as a result of the one year delay in detecting the mass, the cancer progressed from stage two, with the possibility of surgical resection and the certainty of cure, to stage four incurable cancer.