UK – 9th December, 2016: A pensioner who was worried she had been branded a 'hypochondriac' died from cancer after failures by her GP meant she wasn't diagnosed until it was too late.
Mary Morley, 82, spent more than a year going back to her doctor with various symptoms, each time being sent home with nothing more than painkillers. Eventually, after 15 months and a change in GP, she was referred to hospital for further testing where specialists found she had an advanced form of womb cancer.
Mrs Morley was told the disease had spread, the tumour was inoperable and there was nothing doctors could do. She spent the next six months receiving palliative care, before dying in June 2012.
After her death, her family took legal action, believing that had the pensioner been diagnosed earlier the cancer could have been treated. They have now agreed a pay-out with her former GP Dr Amal El-Kafrawy, who practiced at the Delamere Medical Practice in Stretford, Greater Manchester, after his insurers admitted liability for the delays in Mrs Morley's diagnosis.
NICE guidelines for doctors state that an urgent referral should have been made given the symptoms she was showing.
Her devastated family now hope lessons will be learned as a result of her death. Son Kevin said his mother believed she was being labelled a hypochondriac. “She kept going back to her GP with her problems over the next year or so and was given all sorts of painkillers. It seemed to me that they were just trying to treat the symptoms rather than investigating the root cause,” he said.
“In early January 2012 I spoke to my mother's GP myself because I was concerned that she was not being referred for further investigation. We then decided to take my mother to a different GP practice and she was then seen by consultants and referred for an MRI scan.
We were distraught when we found out it was terminal. To know that more could and should have been done two years before her death is difficult to come to terms with. Mum suffered in her final six-months due to the radiotherapy. We just hope that lessons are learned from this so that other vulnerable people can get the appropriate treatment as quickly as possible.”
Ayse Ince, a specialist medical negligence solicitor at Irwin Mitchell who represented the family, labelled it a tragic case that resulted in a woman's life being 'unnecessarily cut short'.
She added: “It is crucial that any form of cancer is caught as early as possible so that the treatment possibilities are maximised. Mary's family now hope that the GP will now learn from these issues to reduce the risk of future delays in diagnosis of cancer in future.”
Source:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4013484/Pensioner-82-worried-branded-hypochondriac-died-cancer-failures-GP-meant-wasn-t-diagnosed-late.html