A failure to diagnose cervical cancer can leave patients vulnerable and at risk for the disease progressing, spreading and becoming more difficult to treat.

Patients who received a false negative on their Pap test and later developed advanced cervical cancer may be eligible to take legal action against their hospital, doctor or clinician for failure to diagnose cervical cancer.

Cervical cancer affects the cervix, the lowest part of the uterus in the female reproductive system. The cervix plays an important role in female reproductive health, fertility and childbirth.

Cervical cancer can be very difficult to treat when it has reached an advanced stage and can quickly spread to other parts of the body. Although early stage cervical cancer shows no symptoms, symptoms of late stage cervical cancer include irregular vaginal bleeding, watery or bloody discharge, and pelvic pain.

Cervical cancer has many potential causes, but a large risk factor is being infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is often asymptomatic in men and can be unknowingly transmitted to women via unprotected sex. This means that countless of women are at a higher risk for cervical cancer without knowing it.

60 years ago, cervical cancer was the leading cause of cancer death in women. To combat the rising number of deaths, routine Pap tests were introduced as an essential aspect of female reproductive health.

During a pap test, a doctor will swab the cervix and collect cells to test for abnormal growth. Doctors currently recommend women over 21 years of age have a pap test every three to five years. The CDC says nearly 20.9 million Pap smears were ordered in physician office visits and outpatient department visits in 2014 alone.

Although Pap smears allow doctors to catch cervical cancer before it reaches dangerous advanced stages, the test is reviewed by a lab technician and therefore subject to human error. It is estimated that a pap test may result in failure to diagnose cervical cancer up to 40 percent of the time.

“Although the Pap test has been more successful than any other screening test in preventing a cancer, it’s not perfect. One of the limitations of the Pap test is that the results need to be examined by the human eye, so an accurate analysis of the hundreds of thousands of cells in each sample is not always possible,” states the American Cancer Society.

With lab technicians reviewing a massive amount of Pap tests every year, failure to diagnose cervical cancer is almost unavoidable. Abnormal cancer cells can be missed due to an error in the test or negligence. Although a failure to diagnose cervical cancer is often accidental, the patients who receive false negatives on their test pay for the mistakes.

If you or a loved one received a false negative Pap test and were later diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer, you may be eligible for legal action. A false negative Pap test lawsuit could help recover damages for the failure to diagnose cervical cancer as well as compensation for medical expenses, missed work, pain and suffering, wrongful death and more.