Indiana Accident News

New Mexico Family Receives $2.5 Million Medical Malpractice Settlement

The Associated Press reports that a family residing in New Mexico has been awarded $2.5 million by a jury for their medical malpractice and wrongful death claim after a wife and mother died of misdiagnosed colon cancer.

Twenty-seven-year-old Elisa Sanchez died of rectal cancer and colon cancer that was repeatedly misdiagnosed as hemorrhoids by Dr. Steven Lampinen. The jury found him guilty of negligence and also held a nurse at the doctor's practice, Brian Bishop, partially at fault for the series of misdiagnoses.

When she was 24, Sanchez went to her doctor complaining of several serious symptoms such as pain and rectal bleeding. Lampinen treated the patient for seven months without conducting diagnostic tests for rectal cancer. Finally, she was rushed to the hospital suffering from horrific pain and bleeding - where doctors quickly diagnosed her with advanced colon cancer. Although she began the correct treatments immediately after her correct diagnosis, she lost out on seven months of treatments during a vital time in her illness.

Sanchez's family sued the doctor and nurse for failing to conduct diagnostic tests, ignoring her serious symptoms, and causing her wrongful death. During the trail, a panel of medical experts claimed that had Sanchez have been diagnosed correctly upon her initial visit to the doctor, her survival rate would have been 97 percent. Instead, she left behind her family after just over two years of battling the advanced cancer.

Sanchez's husband and five-year-old daughter were awarded $2 million for economic losses and lost wages as well as money for pain and suffering. Elisa Sanchez worked in retail before her illness. It is one of the largest medical malpractice payouts in the county since 2004 and one of the largest in the state's history.

Elisa Sanchez died of her cancer in 2007.

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