Possible to sue radiologist for missed diagnosis in Canada?

You can always talk with an attorney, but medical malpractice cases are pretty hard to win. Is it metastatic because of the delay?

As I mentioned in your other thread, a BIRADs3 for a low risk (based on appearance) stable mass is in accordance with guidelines. If the 6 month follow-up imaging shows any changes in the mass, then a biopsy will immediately be ordered. So the fact that a biopsy was ordered quickly now does not mean that the decision 6 months ago was a misdiagnosis.

Does your mother have imaging reports from the past several years? To have any case, you would need to show that the mass when initially seen had a concerning appearance and/or that the mass was seen over several screenings and was not stable.

Were you present with your mother when the report and options were discussed with her 6 months ago?

And what is her diagnosis? Most breast cancer is slow growing; a 6 month delay most often will not impact the diagnosis or prognosis. If your mother's diagnosis is early stage, that makes it unlikely for any lawyer to be interested in taking the case. If however your mother is later stage (I hope not), then there is more possibility that a lawyer might be interested, provided the reports from earlier screenings point to a clearly suspicious mass.

Decker, I am very sorry that your mom was diagnosed with cancer, and I hope that it's still early stage and she makes a full recovery. It's normal to be angry and to try to find someone to blame - it's hard to think that something so horrible and life altering is just shitty luck. Hopefully as your mom moves through the planning and treatment stages, you will feel more in control and will be able to find a way to make peace with this terrible blow you have been dealt.

With regards to the lawsuit, especially since you are in Canada, it's probably not the best investment of your time, money and energy. Only 1-2% of malpractice suits filed in Canada result in a verdict for the patient, and they tend to be cases like sponges left inside a patient resulting in the patient's death. In your case, you will have to prove two things that might be quite difficult.

The first one is that the radiologist was negligent and did not do what a reasonably prudent and competent radiologist would have done. Your mom had a BIRADS3 finding in May 2019, for which the standard of care is 6-months follow up, which is what the radiologist recommended. Six months later, the mass grew, and the new radiologist did what the standard of care would recommend in the NEW situation, which is a biopsy. it would be hard to argue that your mom received anything other than the standard of care. Your only hope is to argue that the radiologist was wrong to assign a BIRADS3 in May 2019 - that means you would have to find an expert to look at the images and testify that the tumor grew visibly between 2018 and 2019, and was thus not "stable" and did not warrant a BIRADS3 designation, but something higher.

The second issue is that you would have to show an "injury" - that is, that the delay caused a worse outcome or an extra expense. If your mom (knock on wood) has metastatic disease, you would satisfy the injury requirement (although you'd still have to pass step one). If she doesn't, and especially if the treatment plan is the same she would have gotten back in May 2019, then the difference in tumor size alone won't count as an "injury". Even if the treatment plan is different, since it will be covered by insurance and thus not cost your mom more, it might still not count as an "injury". Compensation for "pain and suffering" is not very common in Canada, and even those 1-2% of patients that win their malpractice cases get small awards (usually less than 100K).

One more thing - no matter how angry you are with the radiologist, or how right you are to be angry, as long as your mom is alive, suing or not suing is her prerogative, not yours. Please take her feelings into consideration before deciding to press the issue - she might want to focus on treatment, recovery and moving past this episode as fast as possible. Spending years embroiled in a lawsuit might not be her idea of closure.

Best of luck to your mom, and hopefully the news get better from here on.