Medical personnel from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) erroneously diagnosed a woman with a cancerous tumor and subjected her to 30 chemotherapies at the General Hospital of Zone number 50, in San Luis Potosí; For this reason, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) issued a recommendation to the head of the agency, Zoé Robledo.
The events occurred in April 2017, when the patient went to her Family Medicine Unit due to severe pain in her back, buttocks, and legs, indicating to medical personnel that it was a severe contracture; however, her health worsened without any CT scan being performed; She was told that it was a sciatica pain.
The woman returned home with medical treatment and was told four months later that she had cancer, and in fact was not suffering from common sciatica pain. She was told the cancer was malignant, aggressive, inoperable, and that she “would die in six months.”
A year later, in May 2018, another doctor told her that the giant tumor was not cancer, but since it had grown too large in a year of misdiagnoses, she would most likely be amputated from the waist down.
Without confidence in the IMSS, the patient underwent surgery in a private hospital and requires a second operation, but in addition to not having financial resources to perform the surgeries required, her personal integrity and even her life are at risk due to IMSS misdiagnosing her and subjecting her to 30 rounds of chemo.
The CNDH collected evidence that proves violations of human rights to the protection of health and personal integrity, which had an impact on the development of her life, as well as access to information on health, attributable to two doctors.
The agency observed that the actions of the two doctors were inappropriate due to the inconsistencies in their diagnostic stage, causing the patient not to receive adequate treatment.
“It was verified that, as a result of the inadequate medical care provided to the victim, the giant cell tumor progressed to deterioration without surveillance, causing the alteration of her personal integrity due to the side effects of unnecessary chemotherapy, which affected the growth of the tumor,” said the CNDH.
