A SEVILLA woman has died just a year after filing a complaint against Andalucia’s health authorities over delays in a leg tumour diagnosis.
The 44-year-old started to experience pain in her right leg in June 2024 and visited both the Atencion Primaria and Urgencias Hospitalarias to seek the advice of medical professionals.
As symptoms continued from her knee to her thigh, she made repeated trips to these facilities. In one month she visited primary and hospital care institutions twelve times and had three telephone consultations, none of which resulted in a diagnosis.
For months she was offered tests that centred on the knee joint which ruled out injuries in the area but did not expand into looking for other causes of pain.
Eventually, on March 31 2025, she returned to the Urgencias for digestive issues and was given an abdominal scan that detected a large tumour in her thigh.
Identified as high-grade pleomorphic undifferentiated sarcoma, an especially aggressive type of cancer, the woman was referred to the Virgen del Rocio Hospital where she began chemotherapy treatment.
This therapy failed and she was moved to the Palliative Care Unit at San Lazaro Hospital.
It was on April 1, barely a year after her diagnosis, that she passed away following a deterioration in her health.
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Upon her late diagnosis, the woman reported her experiences to the Servicio Andaluz de Salud (SAS) for a potential medical error in the evaluation of a tumour and now her friends and family have stepped in to request an investigation into the case as an alleged manslaughter crime.
Represented by the Sires Abogados office, the woman’s loved ones are arguing that the delayed diagnosis ‘could significantly reduce the possibilities of receiving efficient treatment and contributed to the fatal outcome’.
A report that they have been presented with points out facts that could evidence ‘a medical act far from due standards’ with an ‘unjustified delay in the detection of illness,’ according to these individuals.
This particular case is not dissimilar to that of a 37-year-old woman who sought over €400,000 in compensation after a delay in the diagnosis of a brain tumour.
These incidents both reflect ‘possible failures in health attention’ with complicated diagnostic delays ‘that stem from the loss in therapeutic opportunities,’ according to lawyers.
Now these families are calling for the courts to investigate what happened and determine whether there was negligence in the care provided.
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