The Case of the Young Physician Who Died From a Careless Misdiagnosis

Some years ago, we were contacted by the family of a young woman who had completed medical school and was continuing her training in a residency at a local hospital.

The hospital where she was training at that time, in her first residency year, was one well known to our office. We had sued this hospital a number of times in the past about what we felt was poor patient care with terrible outcomes. We would give that hospital a wide berth if we had an accident in the area.

What happened in this case was the following: The young woman, during her medical training, developed a persistent cough. The usual over-the-counter drugs were of no help, and even strong prescription antibiotics were useless. That course led to chest X-ray films being done. These films were correctly interpreted as showing some sort of mass in her mid-chest area, in between the two lungs. Outside experts were consulted, and a decision was made to biopsy the mass. This was done, and a small amount of tissue from the mass was obtained and sent to the pathology department of the hospital to be read or interpreted by the pathologist on duty that day.

The pathologist read these tissue slides as showing a likely infected mass of some sort, and stronger antibiotics were recommended. However, it was not an infected mass! It was a type of cancer for which prompt and correct treatment would likely have resulted in a cure!