A Multnomah County Circuit Court jury in Portland, OR, has awarded $7.8 million to the family of a woman who died of lung cancer after a lung mass visible on her breast MRI went unflagged, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.
After an 11-day trial, jurors found that Kari Thomas, MD, a radiologist at Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center, was negligent and caused the death of 51-year-old Wendi Lui. Thomas was employed by Diagnostic Imaging NW, which was named as a defendant along with Legacy Health.
Lui had her first breast MRI at Legacy Good Samaritan in 2018. The scan was supplemental screening because of dense breasts and a family history of breast cancer. According to her estate’s lawyers, the 2018 scan showed a roughly 1-cm mass in one lung, which had grown to about 2 cm by her 2019 MRI. The mass wasn’t identified as suspicious until 2020, when it had tripled in volume. By then the cancer had spread to four lymph nodes, and Lui was diagnosed with advanced non-small cell lung cancer. She died several years later.
The full article can be found here.
