Compensation of 120,000 euros to a woman for an erroneous diagnosis of cancer that led to the partial removal of a lung

Three doctors got it wrong and a patient had a partial removal of a lung and the initiation of unnecessary chemotherapy treatment due to a misdiagnosis of cancer. Now, a clinical laboratory must compensate the woman with about 120,000 euros, the complainant's law firm has reported.

The sentence of the twelfth section of the Provincial Court of Madrid condemns two anatomopathologists and the pathological anatomy medical manager of Labco Quality Diagnostics (now called Synlab Diagnósticos Globales) “for medical negligence”, for a double diagnostic error issued in April 2017 when classifying a tumor as malignant and metastatic when it was not.

The patient requested a second opinion and, using the same samples analyzed by the La Paz Hospital laboratory, determined that the tumor was neither malignant nor metastatic, an error that, according to the ruling, the laboratory recognized, although without assuming the consequences.

The note from the MCP law firm explains that the insurance companies of the laboratory and of the doctors rejected a previous friendly agreement giving the judicial battle until obtaining two sentences against them, the first from Court number 3 of Alcobendas, the one issued by the Provincial Court of Madrid.

The defendants must pay compensation of 118,957.82 euros plus default interest for the physical, aesthetic and psychological sequelae derived from the unnecessary partial removal of the lung.