Medical malpractice ???

Hard to say. Medical malpractice is hard to prove. And the standards are different in every jurisdiction. So you would need to consult a lawyer in the jurisdiction where you think the malpractice may have occurred. Note: This is not legal advice...just a general discussion. Please consult a lawyer in the appropriate juriscdition for legal advice on your particular situation.

Speaking very, very generally, you need to have had a doc who didn't meet the "standard of care" when presented with your case. That is, your doc was negligent. It's very hard to find a expert witness doc who will say that negligence occurred unless the deviation from the standard of care is extreme. Then you need to prove that you were damaged by the violation of the standard of care.

So thinking about what you said:

Would a different radiologist have had a different view of your 2011 and 2014 mammograms? That it was the same size in 2011 and 2014 would seem to suggest the benign result reported might have been reasonable. (Not negligent)

Should the "extremely dense breasts" comment have cued someone to try a different scanning method? The view that a different method might be appropriate for extremely dense breasts has been developing over time. Seems like most imaging centers now send out a form letter with that information...but it's up to the patient's ordering doc to decide to order something else. When did it become (or has it become) the standard of care to use another imaging methodology than mammography when the breasts are dense? Is an US (which you had) sufficient for the then-current standard of care? Or should they have gone on to a 3rd imaging modality, given the then-current standard of care? I don't know...

The 2015 growth + discharge might be why they decided it called for a biopsy. Certainly that's when they decided to biopsy. I assume you don't have a problem with that care...

Your big problem is probably the need to prove damages. Your diagnosis in 2015 was DCIS...which by definition can't spread. (If your 2015 diagnosis had been IDC, then you'd have to somehow prove that it wouldn't have been IDC if you'd been treated earlier...an almost impossible burden.) Would you have had a different result if the DCIS had been diagnosed in 2011 or 2014? MX (or LX w/ radiation) was still being used as treatment then. That you kept your breast for an additional 1-4 years doesn't sound like damage.

Over time, there seems to have been an increasing push toward less extreme surgery. But women are still choosing MX when being offered both options...it's hard to come up w/ a theory where you were damaged, even if there was negligence.

Further, in some jurisdictions, there are caps/limits on medical malpractice recoveries.

If you're interested in pursuing this, you need to talk to a lawyer whose specialty is medical malpractice.

But I suspect you'll discover that there was (legally speaking) no malpractice.

HTH,

LisaAlissa (reminder: not legal advice!)