Settlement obtained for family of a man who died following undiagnosed mouth cancer

Julie Crossley, a medical injury specialist at Ashtons Legal, has succeeding in obtaining £70,000 for the family of a man who died unnecessarily because his early symptoms of mouth cancer were not investigated fully.

In the spring of 2014, Mr W visited his GP with a ‘baked bean’ sized lump on the side of his tongue. Mr W’s GP referred him to hospital for some tests, none of which had evidence of a tumour and a biopsy came back as normal. However, Mr W was never given a definitive diagnosis. He was removed from the oral surgery waiting list without consultation a couple of months later and was lost in the system for several weeks. Mr W should have been urgently referred back to the consultant. When he was seen in due course, the treating doctor failed to examine his tongue and find the 3cm mass which should have led to a diagnosis of mouth cancer in early autumn.

Mr W was finally diagnosed in January 2015 by which time the only treatment option was palliative chemo-radiotherapy and he died in July 2015.

Julie Crossley comments: “Unfortunately we see cases such as this far too often. In Mr W’s case, expert evidence found that if Mr W had been diagnosed in July 2014 he would have had an 80% chance of cure with surgery to remove the tumour. If Mr W had been diagnosed in September 2014, expert evidence predicts he would have survived two to three years on the balance of probabilities.”