Family receive five-figure damages after grandmother’s life cut short by Lewisham Hospital failure to spot cancer for a year

A hospital has admitted the failure of its doctors to spot signs of lung cancer on a patient’s scan led to a 12-month delay in treatment – which cost her up to four years of life.

Maureen Gater was referred to the University Hospital Lewisham by her GP after three weeks coughing up blood.

An X-ray showed a nodule on her lung but the scan was wrongly recorded by doctors as not being of any significance.

So a follow-up X-ray was not done within six weeks, which the trust admitted should have happened.

The family have now been awarded £65,000 in agreed damages.

That meant the cancer was not diagnosed until more than a year later, when Mrs Gater returned to her surgery suffering from pains all over her body and a persistent cough – again having coughed up blood.

She was again referred for a chest X-ray to Lewisham Hospital – when CT scans showed a 4cm mass pressing into her chest wall. A biopsy confirmed the cancer.

She underwent four cycles of chemotherapy treatment but the cancer spread to her brain and kidney the following year. She became too ill for further treatment and died in December 2017, three ears after first becoming ill.

As part of a legal case led by medical negligence specialists Hudgell Solicitors, Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust admitted to breaches of its duty of care, and that the errors had caused a 12 month delay in diagnosis.

The trust also admitted that, had a second scan been carried out some six weeks after the first, and the cancer spotted, Mrs Gater, of Bromley, would likely have lived another four years.

The family took legal action as they wanted answers and for lessons to be learned – and they want other families to ask questions about scans.

Mrs Gater’s daughter, Joanne Christie, said it had been hard to come to terms with losing precious time with her mother.

“It is so hard to know your mum has been taken from you early because of a mistake by those treating her,” she said.

“When mum had her scan and we heard nothing back we all assumed it was good news and that there was nothing to worry about.

It was not until more than a year later when she really started to feel quite ill again that she went back and we started asking questions about the scan a year earlier.

“My mum was somebody who would only ever say she didn’t feel right when she felt ill. She didn’t make a fuss.

“Looking back now, over that year between the first scan and the one when the cancer was finally spotted, she did begin to struggle.

She’d get dizzy if it was late. She started to slow down and needed a trolley to walk with, which was unlike her as she was always fit and active.

“I can remember that my sister asked a consultant, who had actually treated my dad for his lung cancer before he died, if the cancer should have been spotted on the first X-ray.

He just looked away from her. We knew then there had been a mistake.

“We know and appreciate how hard people work in the NHS and how under pressure they are, perhaps now more so than ever, so I want other families to know how important it is to question things and ask more about scan results.

“I wouldn’t want other people to lose loved ones, and given all that has happened with Covid, people perhaps have to shout louder now more than ever.

“My mum lost precious time with her seven grandchildren.

“She’s missed her grandson growing up who she was so close to, and also didn’t get to see her West End performing granddaughter gain a full scholarship at Italia Conti.

“She also wasn’t aware that her illness changed the course of her eldest granddaughter’s career, as she is now qualified and working as a nurse. We’ve also lost precious time with her too of course.”

Solicitor Shauna Page, of Hudgell Solicitors, represented the family in the legal claim and said: “This was a very sad case which highlighted the huge importance of scans being thoroughly examined and recorded in the right manner.”