When a woman has a regular Pap test, also known as a Pap smear, it can dramatically reduce the chances for her developing cervical cancer, and even stop it before it starts.

The introduction of the Pap smear almost 60 years ago helped dramatically reduce the rate of women being diagnosed with cervical cancer, which used to be the leading cause of cancer death among American women.

However, women are still occasionally being diagnosed with cervical cancer despite getting regular Pap smears. Many wonder why this is so. Regular Pap smears are very effective at finding pre-cancerous tumors and can help prevent cervical cancer before it begins. Simply speaking, women who regularly get Pap smears should not be getting a cervical cancer diagnosis.

The answer could be as a result of possible negligence at the hands of medical labs in charge of reading Pap smear tests and those responsible for detecting cancerous cells on Pap smears.

This was allegedly the case for a Florida woman who suffered from cervical cancer from a missed diagnosis for cervical cancer and died. The test was misread, resulting in a misdiagnosis that prevented her from beginning cancer treatment earlier.

According to the medical malpractice lawsuit filed by her husband, he sued the medical lab alleging negligence. The jury found the medical lab liable for negligence in 2014, awarding the woman’s family $15.8 million for wrongful death.

Cervical Cancer Misdiagnosis

According to the American Cancer Society, “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.”

The American Cancer Society says 13,240 individuals will be diagnosed with cervical cancer in the United States. It is also estimated that roughly 4,170 women will die from cervical cancer.

With a cervical cancer misdiagnosis, a woman who is told that she had a normal Pap smear could only return a few years later to find out that she has Stage 3 or Stage 4 cervical cancer. This can be a particularly unfortunate event as if only the Pap smear report was interpreted correctly could this have all been prevented.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that there are approximately 17.4 million Pap tests ordered through physician offices and 3.5 million Pap tests ordered through outpatient hospital departments. As a result of these staggering numbers, Pap tests cannot be examined by the human eye and overworked lab technicians are assumed to be a reason for cervical cancer misdiagnoses.

Filing a cervical cancer negligence lawsuit can help assist you or your family cover any of the following:

• Pain and suffering
• Wrongful death
• Missed work
• Hospital stays
• Medical expenses
• More

Situations of laboratory negligence practices that may be cause to file a cervical cancer negligence lawsuit may also include the following: improper Pap smear processing (including identification, staining, and review of slides); overwork or inexperience of cytotechnologists; improper interpretation by cytotechnologist/ pathologist; and improper comments made by cytotechnologist/pathologist.