A court in Cantabria has sentenced the Cantabrian Health Service – and the insurer Berkley Insurance – to pay 30,000 to a man who sued the hospital after the death of his 32-year-old wife after suffering from colon cancer.
The ruling considers that the patient did not receive adequate care, since she came with very serious symptoms that lasted for a long time – severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, high level of fecal calproctetin – but the necessary tests were not performed.
The hospital scheduled her for a colonoscopy six months after the deceased went to the emergency room for the first time, in November 2018.
During the trial, the expert provided by the defense, a doctor specializing in oncology, explained that, with the condition he presented, these tests should have been performed in four or six weeks.
In April 2019, a CT scan was performed – before the scheduled colonoscopy, as the symptoms were getting worse – which revealed colon cancer with metastases to the liver, lung, peritoneal and ovaries.
Nothing could be done for her, beyond treating her with palliative chemotherapy. The patient died in August 2020.
The Confilegal legal portal echoed the news a few days ago, which states that “the judge, in agreement with the expert, considered that if the diagnostic tests agreed upon in November 2018 had been performed on a preferential basis in December, there would have been an increase the patient’s survival, which after five years would have been 50%”.
“We are talking about a simple diagnostic test in a patient who did not improve and which, precisely because of her age, allowed us to infer the existence of a more serious process compared to the initial suspicions,” said judge Juan Varea Orbea.