A patient was treated for cancer, underwent repeated chemotherapy admissions, and endured months of declining health. The problem, as later discovered, was that she did not have cancer at all.

She had tuberculosis.         

The case became a stark reminder of what can happen when serious treatment begins before serious diagnosis is secured.

The patient first consulted doctors at a reputed hospital in the mid-1990s for persistent illness. Based on clinical indicators, elevated markers, and suspicious findings from fluid analysis, she was diagnosed with malignancy and promptly started on chemotherapy. Over multiple admissions, anti-cancer treatment continued. Yet her condition failed to improve and progressively worsened.

Eventually, the family sought care elsewhere.

At another specialist centre, she was evaluated afresh and diagnosed not with cancer, but tuberculosis involving the reproductive tract and related structures. Once anti-tubercular treatment began, her condition improved.

That contrast became the medico-legal fulcrum of the dispute.

A Medical Board later reviewed the matter and found that the earlier diagnostic material was not conclusive for malignancy. It noted that where cytology findings were uncertain, further confirmation, including repeat testing, ought to have been considered before commencing chemotherapy. The Board also observed that tuberculosis can sometimes mimic malignancy and may be difficult to distinguish without careful diagnostic correlation.

Consumer fora held the hospital liable for deficiency in service.

But the litigation took on a second dimension: delay. The complaint, filed in 1998, remained pending for years. The original complainant died during the prolonged legal process. Compensation awarded initially was modest, and later proceedings examined whether mere principal amounts, without interest, truly compensated for decades of erosion in value.

The National Commission held that they did not.

Recognising both the established negligence and the extraordinary passage of time, it awarded substantial additional interest-based compensation over and above the original sums.

The case is notable not only for diagnostic failure, but for what followed it: chemotherapy for a disease not proved, delayed treatment of a disease actually present, and justice arriving years after the patient herself was gone.

IML Insight

Misdiagnosis cases are not judged solely by whether doctors were wrong. They are judged by whether the diagnostic pathway was reasonable at the time treatment began.

Where high-risk therapy such as chemotherapy is initiated on inconclusive evidence, the legal scrutiny becomes sharper. If safer confirmatory steps were available and omitted, liability may follow.

The case also highlights a wider truth: delayed justice can dilute compensation. In long-running medical negligence claims, interest is often not an accessory to relief — it is part of meaningful relief itself.

Source : Order pronounced by National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission on 17h April, 2026.