Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable forms of gynecological cancer. A large part of the reason why it is so preventable is that there are very effective screening measures in place for it. Medical professionals recommend that women get Pap smears regularly to screen for cervical cancer cells, but if a woman gets a false negative Pap smear result, she could develop cervical cancer. 

A Pap test or Pap smear is a test that was developed over 60 years ago. It collects cells from a patient’s cervix so they can be microscopically analyzed for the presence of cancer cells. As a result of the pap smear being introduced into routine health care, the rate of cervical cancer death has decreased significantly.

Pap smears are very effective at detecting pre-cancerous cells, and treatment can be started to stop cervical cancer before it starts.

So, in most cases, women who get regular pap smears should have a very low risk of being diagnosed with cervical cancer. However, some women report that they received a negative cervical cancer report form a pap smear but were later diagnosed with cervical cancer. This suggests that the negative report that they got from a pap smear was in fact a false negative.

A false negative pap smear report can occur when a medical lab fails to properly diagnose and detect cancer cells in a cervical cell sample. A range of medical lab errors can cause a patient to receive a false negative pap smear.

According to the American Cancer Society, “Although the Pap test has been more successful than any other screening test in preventing 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 of the hundreds of thousands of cells in each sample is not always possible.

Reportedly, over 17.4 million Pap tests were ordered during in office visits and in almost 3.4 million hospital outpatient department visits in 2014 in the United States. Many lab technicians can be overworked, which could cause them to make errors in analysis and deliver a false negative pap smear.

Such inaccurate analysis was reportedly the case for a Florida woman who died of cervical cancer in 2011. In 2008, she received a false negative pap smear. Her husband sued the lab that tested her sample for negligence, claiming that they failed to properly identify the cancer. In 2014, a jury ruled in his favor, awarding the woman’s family $15.8 million in damages for an alleged wrongful death.

Deaths like that of the Florida woman are particularly devastating because they are preventable. Had a Pap smear been analyzed correctly, the woman could have started treatment for her cervical cancer earlier and survived the cancer. If you or a loved one were diagnosed with cervical cancer within the last five years after receiving a false negative Pap smear, filing a legal claim could enable you to receive compensation for physical, emotional and financial injury.