Woman’s life cut short by delayed lung cancer diagnosis

A hospital’s failure to diagnose a woman’s cancer denied her precious time with her family, England’s Health Ombudsman has found.

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) is urging hospitals to improve processes to avoid delays in diagnosis.

A woman underwent a CT scan at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust towards the end of November 2017 to investigate a potential liver problem.

While nothing significant was found on her liver, the scan revealed a nodule – a small dense area - and a possible pulmonary embolism on her left lung.

In December, the woman was referred to a clinic to treat the pulmonary embolism. The consultant at the clinic wrote to her GP asking she be referred for another CT scan three months later to investigate the nodule. This was not done and a review in mid-April 2018 revealed the follow-up scan had not been carried out.

An urgent CT scan towards the end of May 2018 revealed the woman had lung cancer, of which she died aged 81 in February 2019.

The Ombudsman found the woman should have been diagnosed with lung cancer in December 2017, around six months earlier.

The Trust should not have passed the matter back to the woman’s GP and did not appropriately follow up the lung nodule’s finding.

Though PHSO cannot say exactly what would have happened, there is evidence the woman may have lived longer if the diagnosis had been made sooner.

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Source: PHSO, 6 February 2025