Senior partner John L.A. Lyddane recently obtained a defense verdict in Suffolk County Supreme Court for an internist in a case involving failure to diagnose a rare cancer.

The Plaintiff, at the time a 31 year old pregnant woman, was receiving prenatal care from doctors at a private OB/GYN facility. Her doctors learned that she was suffering from significant anemia and she was referred to an internist, represented by Mr. Lyddane. The defendant doctor noted that she was also suffering from fatigue, but concluded that both the anemia and fatigue were due to the pregnancy and that the anemia was also contributed to by thalassemia minor, a genetic deficiency. The doctor prescribed nutritional supplements at that time.

Plaintiff’s baby was born in October of 1999, and the mother underwent further evaluation following the child’s birth by two doctors also named in the suit. In the summer of the following year, the Plaintiff returned to the defendant internist’s office suffering from pain that was localized to one hip. Tests revealed that she was suffering multiple myeloma, a cancer typically found in the elderly which had caused a near fracture of her left femur. Plaintiff claimed that the disease could have been detected in 1999 when she was originally seen by the doctor and that earlier detection would have prevented the fracture and led to more effective treatment of the disease. Plaintiff sued the doctors that originally treated her at the OB/GYN office as well as the internist for failure to diagnose her cancer. During trial, several of the other doctors were dismissed based on the expiration of the relevant statute of limitations, but the matter proceeded against Mr. Lyddane’s client.

Plaintiff’s counsel claimed that the Plaintiff suffered severe anemia and that thalassemia minor, the defendant doctor’s diagnosis, cannot cause anemia of such severity. Counsel further contended that her treating doctors should have conducted bone marrow tests which would have detected the multiple myeloma.

Mr. Lyddane proved through a hematology expert that multiple myeloma rarely affects people who have not reached age 60 and that the plaintiff’s anemia was in fact a product of her pregnancy and thalassemia minor. The patient’s symptoms never suggested that she was suffering from cancer. During cross-examination, the plaintiffs’ expert oncologist acknowledged that currently used guidelines would have determined that the plaintiff’s cancer did not surpass the first stage of development from which the defense argued that the diagnosis was timely and any claimed delay caused no harm to the patient.