Jury Finds Wichita Hospital Fully at Fault for Delayed Lymphoma Diagnosis After Missed Chest X-ray Findings

A Wichita psychiatrist who sat on the medical staff of Wesley Medical Center took part each year in the hospital's Medical Staff Recognition Week, which offered staff physicians a health audit that included a chest X-ray. Dr. Neil Aldoroty had one every year beginning in 1981. The 1991 and 1992 films were read as negative. The film taken in September 1993 was not: the radiology report described soft tissue fullness suggesting a mass near the aortic knob and noted that a similar finding had been present on the prior year's film, though it was never reported.

Follow-up testing, including CT scans, a bone marrow test and a lymph node biopsy, led to a diagnosis of Stage IV low-grade non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. His oncologist testified that Stage IV disease is not curable with conventional treatment, which can bring remission but not a cure, and that catching this lymphoma at Stage I or II leaves a real chance of cure. Dr. Aldoroty's claim was that the annual films had offered an unusual chance to find the disease early, and that the chance was lost.

He sued the three radiologists who read the films and the hospital, which operated Wesley Medical Center. The radiologists settled before trial. The case went to a jury against the hospital alone. Kansas law barred holding the hospital liable for the radiologists' own medical judgment, so the claim rested on the hospital's own duty: to pull a patient's earlier films and have them ready so the radiologist could compare old and new. A radiology expert for Dr. Aldoroty testified that reading a chest film without the prior films at hand falls below the standard of care. Dr. Aldoroty's personal physician added that, when they reviewed the old films together after the 1993 diagnosis, the abnormality looked obvious as far back as 1991.

The hospital's radiologists said they had compared the earlier films and had left the comparison out of their reports because the group used a standard negative report for normal studies. The jury did not accept that account. It found Wesley Medical Center 100 percent at fault, assigning nothing to the radiologists or to the personal physician, and awarded Dr. Aldoroty $1,245,000.

Mark B. Hutton of Hutton & Hutton argued the case for Dr. Aldoroty before the Kansas Supreme Court, with Anne H. Pankratz and Derek S. Casey of the same firm on the brief.

On July 10, 1998, the court, in an opinion by Justice Allegrucci, rejected the hospital's arguments that the evidence could not support any finding of fault and that Kansas law barred the claim. It held there was evidence, though weak, that the hospital had failed to make the earlier films available. But the court found that a verdict placing all the fault on the hospital could not be squared with the uncontroverted expert testimony that the radiologists had also fallen short, or with an instruction the jury appeared to have misunderstood, as shown by a question it sent out during deliberations. It reversed and remanded for a new trial. The sources do not report how the retrial came out.