Breast Cancer Misdiagnosis

I’d worry less about the performance of the mammography than about the read of the actual image. The actual mechanics of performing the mammography, while important, are less important than having a well-qualified radiologist. A good radiologist will know both whether the mammography was set up correctly in the first place just by looking at the image (and will re-order another one if not), and whether it’s being read and interpreted correctly.

This is REALLY, REALLY, scary....thank you for the great response....how do we change things????? This has happened to me in a way...diagnosed with stage 1, when it was really stage 4...operation although had only gone to my bones. I am trying to find out if I should have even had the masectomy?!!! I do think we have to be careful, and make sure the patient isn't blamed...there is NO way that someone in this situation wouldn't believe or for that matter WANT to believe that it is not as bad as the dr. is making it out to be. (Especially if they are the chief of surgery at a very, very prominent hospital). My question is, and I will be asking it further: Why aren't patients seen by an oncologist first...prior to a surgeon????? My oncologist was the only one who picked up on my back pain...Also surgeons need to have questionairres asking patients about how they feel etc, back pain, etc.!!!!!! Why isn't this monitored by an overall board??????????????????????

Unfortunately, we see cases like these all too often. Pathology reports can be misread and frequently are, and that alone colors everything in terms of getting the right diagnosis and the right treatment.

Two particular examples come to mind. A recent patient was told by doctors she had a recurrence of the cervical cancer she’d had before and that this time it had spread to her colon. But that diagnosis was wrong; she actually now had colon cancer, and had received the WRONG treatment all that time. Doctors – even doctors from some of the most sophisticated hospitals in the world – can sometimes miss things like this; even things that make us shake our heads when we read about it.

In another case, a patient thought the lump on her throat was a goiter, and had many tests including a biopsy that came back normal. After months of treatment, the lump grew worse and her doctors recommended she just “keep an eye on it.” She came to us for a consultation with our team and experts, who re-tested the tissue from her original biopsy and determined that her biopsy was not normal. We recommended immediate removal of her thyroid, and tests on her removed thyroid showed that she did, in fact, have cancer. Fortunately, it was caught in time.