West Yorkshire Woman Recovers £400,000 Damages Against Hospital

The Liddy’s Solicitors clinical negligence team helped a woman from West Yorkshire to recover £400,000 in damages from a hospital, after a consultant missed the opportunity to spot her cancer at an early stage.

The patient kept complaining to her GP that her warts were becoming ulcerous and was eventually examined at hospital. Although the ulcers were noted, no biopsy was taken, although it should have been.

If staff had tested the warts at that stage, they would have discovered early stage cancer.  When the patient was re-examined at the hospital, two years later, the cancer had spread and she had to undergo a very serious operation to remove the cancer and take out her lymph nodes to minimise the risk of it spreading further.

A side effect of the operation is cellulitis and vasculitis, which make it very uncomfortable to move due to swelling of the legs. She is now unable to look after her disabled son because of the condition and has to rely on the assistance of others. She will require assistance for the rest of her life.

The moral of this story is that if you are expecting some results from the GP or hospital and you don’t receive them, chase them up because results or patient details are sometimes lost in the system.

In this particular case it would not have helped, because the consultant who originally saw the ulcerations forgot to refer the patient for biopsies.

On rare occasions though we see terrible outcomes from test results that have been lost or have not been sent on. Whenever this happens, it is right that the patient receives damages, as there should be systems in place to avoid human error.

Liddy’s Solicitors were instructed to pursue this claim after other solicitors had been working on it for two years with no progress.  The case settled just before trial for £400,000 damages.

If you have suffered an injury due to mistakes in treatment by a GP or at hospital, contact Liddy’s clinical negligence team via the website or by calling 01226 731314 to see if we can help.