The team at John Pickering and Partners have handled many cases to do with hospitals and/or GPs failure in treating cancer.

This can be in the form of:

• Delay in referral of the patient with concerning symptoms
• Misinterpreting the biopsy
• Misinterpreting CT scans and reporting them as normal
• Failure to follow up patients after scans have been performed
• Failure to screen for cancer due to a strong family history

The above can have disastrous consequences leaving patients to endure unnecessary chemotherapy and /or radiotherapy, operations and then still being left to face life long treatment or even death.

Case Reports

K –v- Aintree Hospitals NHS Trust

The Claimant, a widow received £12,000 for the 5 months pain and suffering her husband underwent before he was correctly diagnosed with colorectal cancer. In this time the deceased suffered acute pain, anaemia, diarrhoea and weight loss.

On the 14th June 2002, the deceased was admitted to the hospital of the defendant Trust for surgery to repair a fracture to his hand. Prior to his discharge it was noted that his haemoglobin was low. He was referred to a haematologist who diagnosed iron deficiency anaemia but no further investigations were carried out.

On the 30th September, he returned to his GP complaining of epigastric pain, diarrhoea and abdominal tenderness. His GP noted that his haemoglobin and ferritin were low and referred him to an upper gastrointestinal cancer service clinic.

In November 2002 the deceased was admitted to hospital with severe abdominal pain, diarrhoea and weight loss. An emergency laparotomy was performed which revealed a large abdominal tumour arising from the caecum, invading the duodenum, pancreas and terminal ileum. The tumour was cancerous.

Following his operation, he made a slow recovery, complicated by sepsis and he subsequently developed intestinal obstruction.

Subsequent palliative care was provided and he died on the 6th May 2003.

Liability was admitted in that the defendants agreed that the low haemoglobin should have been investigated fully but both parties agreed that the cancer would have been terminal in June 2002 in any event.

The case for the Claimant’s widow was settled for £12,000 which reflected the 5 month pain and suffering he endured between July and November 2002.

T,R,S –v- The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital NHS Trust

The Claimants in this matter where a family who had the gene for the hereditary form of bowel cancer – Hereditary Non Polyposis Colorectal Cancer (HNPCC).

Facts of the Case

G was married to J and they had five children which included T,R and S.

When G died in his forties of colon cancer the family wrote to The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital NHS Trust enquiring as to whether the five children should be tested for a hereditary form of bowel cancer as the family knew that the grandfather had died of bowel cancer i.e. their dad's dad but also the grandfather's sister had died of a cancer.

When the mother of the children wrote to the hospital to ask for reassurance in relation to testing for her five children she was reassured that they did not need testing for the hereditary form of bowel cancer.

In December 1999 T started to suffer with bowel problems.  Her G.P. referred her to The Royal Liverpool Hospital and in July 2000 she had a colonoscopy and she was informed by the Royal Hospital that she had bowel cancer.

Further to diagnosis of T's bowel cancer they confirmed that as there were three members with bowel cancer the other four children now needed to be screened for the hereditary form of bowel cancer.

Four out of the five children carried the defective gene which meant that some time in their life they would develop hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC).  The other child did not carry the defective gene.

Out of the four children who had the defective gene three of them had cancer which was T,R and S.

Following T's diagnosis she had most of her bowel removed and as there were some complications during this operation she was in intensive care for four weeks and then required a colostomy bag, chemotherapy, and was left with faecal urgency.

Also due to the number of operations that she had in intensive care she was very affected psychologically.

R also had most of her bowel removed but did not require chemotherapy.  As they had to remove more of her bowel than T's, sadly R suffered with faecal incontinence.

S  also required most of her bowel to be removed but sadly she developed secondaries in her ovaries and S deteriorated experiencing a very painful death, dying of bone cancer leaving a husband and four young children.

The issue of liability in this case was the hospital's failure to screen the girls after their father died, with colonoscopies every two years and if polyps (pre-malignant cysts) had been found then the colonoscopies would be increased to every year.

Rachel Donovan, Associate solicitor at John Pickering and Partners ran the case for the family and in doing so had to go back many generations to assemble a family tree. This meant she had to contact each living member of the family to obtain their authority to use their names in the family tree which would eventually be disclosed to the defendant Trust.

Experts involved

Before instructing an expert Rachel Donovan did an extensive amount of research on the Amsterdam criteria which is the criteria the hospitals follow when deciding who to screen for this hereditary form of bowel cancer, HNPCC.  .  Then she approached Mr. Paul Durdey Colorectal Expert and he provided a preliminary report on liability and further to receiving this report she then went on and instructed a consultant geneticist, Dr. Peter Lunt. Reports were also obtained from oncologists care experts and psychiatrist.

Settlement

The case on behalf of the family settled during a Round Table settlement meeting with the hospital, in the sum of £750,000.

Notes

John Pickering and Partners LLP

About Us

Our clients are people who have suffered injury as a result of a medical accident in the UK.  We are clinical and medical negligence solicitors.  We handle negligence claims against hospitals, GP’s and other medical practitioners for clients across the UK. 

We try to obtain maximum amounts of compensation. 

We are committed to providing public funding (previously known as Legal Aid) and have a franchise from the Community Legal Services Commission.  This means that they have looked at the firm carefully and approved of the way we work.  They consider that we are medical negligence claims specialists.  They trust us to handle medical accident claims properly. 

If you are not eligible for public funding, we can offer a Conditional Fee Agreement, also known as a ‘no win, no fee’ agreement with insurance.  We shall check the best method of funding your claim. 

All 3 of our offices (Liverpool, Manchester and Halifax) are accredited by the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers. 

Claire Horton is an experienced clinical negligence solicitor who is based in our Manchester office.  She continues to practice as an independent funding ajudicator for the Legal Services Commission and acts on a pro-bono basis for the AvMA helpline.

For further advice on medical negligence in Liverpool please also contact Rachel Donovan and for Halifax contact Ruth Davies, who are both experienced in the field of clinical negligence.

We provide free initial advice to people seeking information about a potential clinical negligence claim. 

If you need advice about a clinical negligence claim, contact us now for information about making a claim for compensation.