$1.3 Million Settlement: Misinterpreted Ultrasound Leads to Delayed Diagnosis and Wrongful Death of Six-Year-Old Girl

Rawls Law Group recently reached a $1.3 million settlement for the family of a six-year-old girl who died from a small bowel obstruction. The defendant radiologist misinterpreted an ultrasound remotely and reported the findings as nonspecific, failing to identify massive ascites and bowel abnormalities that plaintiff’s experts opined were clear indicators of ischemia or obstruction.

Rather than an immediate transfer for emergency surgery, the medical team followed the radiologist's recommendation for a confirmatory CT scan with contrast, a process that wasted several critical hours while the child's bowel was dying.

By the time a high-grade small bowel obstruction was definitively diagnosed, the child had decompensated and suffered a cardiopulmonary arrest en route to a larger hospital. An autopsy later confirmed the cause of death as small bowel necrosis resulting from a Meckel’s diverticulum.