A 41-year-old woman who suffered from chronic headaches for many years is suing over NIS 2.5 million from the General Health Fund, claiming that only after 9 years of continuous complaints and examinations was a tumor discovered in her head, and this was due to mistakes by the doctors, who did not interpret the tests she underwent correctly.
The lawsuit shows that the woman suffered from chronic headaches starting at the age of 25, but only 9 years later she was diagnosed with a benign tumor in the pituitary gland, which is responsible for the production and secretion of various hormones, including growth hormone and milk hormone. According to her, although she was examined by many doctors over the years, none of them were able to diagnose what caused her severe headaches, even though other symptoms she suffered from, such as the cessation of menstruation and other female problems, are directly related to the pituitary gland.
The plaintiff claims that only following her insistence, she was sent in 2008 for a brain CT scan at Kaplan Hospital where the tumor was seen, however, according to her, the test was incorrectly interpreted as normal and the medical staff did not address her complaints regarding the cessation of menstruation and the secretion of milk from the breasts as well as the blood tests which were not normal. Only in 2016 – 8 years after the CT scan, when she privately consulted a specialist, was she referred to an MRI and an endocrinologist, and only then was the tumor in the pituitary gland diagnosed.
Through lawyers Dr. Avi Rubinstein and Shmuel Yakirvitz, the plaintiff claims that the delay in diagnosis for so many years led to the growth of the tumor, which spread, put pressure on the optic nerve and other blood vessels in the head – something that made it difficult to completely remove it. Because of this, she was forbidden to conceive and she would have to until the end of her life to inject her with a drug with severe side effects.
According to her, even today she still suffers from headaches, weight loss, irregular menstruation, bleeding, and other physical and aesthetic phenomena that harm her self-image and her confidence and of course the quality of her life.
An expert in internal medicine and endocrinology, whose opinion is attached to the lawsuit, stated that over the years the doctors of the health insurance company and the hospital that treated her acted “not as required of a reasonable doctor”, did not make a differential diagnosis for the headaches she was suffering from and other symptoms and did not send her for the required tests in a timely manner. The expert estimates that if the plaintiff had been diagnosed at an earlier date, it is very likely that there would have been a real chance of complete excision of the tumor and the plaintiff’s full recovery, so that she would not have needed drug treatment for the rest of her life and would have been spared the side effects and suffering associated with this treatment.
Another senior expert, in the field of neurosurgery, expressed his opinion and stated that already in 2008 it was possible to see in the CT examination that it was a tumor, but it was incorrectly interpreted as normal.