Imagine yourself sitting in the doctor’s office and receiving news that you have a serious illness such as cancer, diabetes, or celiac disease. After learning of this overwhelming diagnosis, you go home to deal with just how you will handle this news. At home, though, you cannot escape the feeling that your diagnosis is just not right. However, doctors know what they are doing, so you should just trust them, right?

Unfortunately, the answer is “no.” According to CBS News reporter Jessica Firger, doctors misdiagnose 1 out of 20 patients in the United States, and each year 12 million adult patients are misdiagnosed, which results in  at least 251,454 deaths.

According to a CNN article by Jen Christensen and Elizabeth Cohen, “…doctors at Johns Hopkins, suggest medical errors may kill more people than lower respiratory diseases like emphysema and bronchitis do. That would make these medical mistakes the third leading cause of death in the United States.” With information and statistics such as these, one wonders if doctors can still be trusted.  

In some cases, it depends on the doctor’s intentions. In numerous cases, the doctor’s intentions were truly good, but  they made a mistake. Of course, in other cases, some doctors misdiagnose patients because they refuse to actually take a good look at them or, in what can only be described as criminal behavior, misdiagnose in order to get more money from their patients.

A famous case that sentenced a well-known doctor in Michigan to 45 years in prison was the one involving Dr. Farid Fata. According to court records and NBC News reporter Anna R. Schechter, Dr. Fata misdiagnosed his patients on purpose just to get money into his pockets. Dr. Fata had at least five-hundred fifty-three victims whom he stole from and misdiagnosed with cancer. Officials took Dr. Fata into custody on August 6, 2013 and sentenced him on July 10, 2015 to 45 years. According to Detroit Free Press reporter Robert Allen, “Fata is expected to serve at least 34 years of his sentence, possibly at a low-security prison in Michigan.”

Monica Flagg, a former patient of Dr. Fata, told NBC’s Lester Holt in an interview that her physician recommended  that she see Dr. Fata because he was a well-known, respected doctor in the field of  hematology /oncology. When she went in to see him, he ran blood work and, as soon as he got the results back, he told her that she had multiple myeloma which, according to Cancer.org, is “…a cancer formed by malignant plasma cells.” Flagg was devastated by the news and  asked him what they could do about it right away. Dr. Fata’s first response was chemotherapy.

With months and months of chemotherapy on the horizon, Flagg and her husband decided to take a vacation. However, when they returned, she went to her first day of treatment. Later that day – sad after such an emotional start to her therapy –  she went home to rest and ended up tripping over her suitcase from her vacation. Unfortunately, she had to go to the hospital ; she was injured with a broken leg.

Dr. Soe Maunglay, who worked for Dr. Fata, was responsible for checking in on Dr. Fata’s patients since he was away on vacation. However, when Dr. Maunglay checked Monica’s condition, he noticed  something odd about Monica’s condition. According to Dr. Maunglay, she seemed way too normal for someone who had multiple myeloma and had just broken her leg. Dr. Maunglay looked over her charts from the blood work that Dr. Fata had taken and saw that Fata lied to her about having cancer. After that, Dr. Maunglay went to the police, who began to dig into all of Fata’s patients and saw he’d been lying to more than five hundred of his patients. Soon, the FBI came in and made the arrest.

Since the discovery that she was not truly sick, Monica Flagg is doing better but is still trying to deal with the effects after from the first treatment. In year 2015, Flagg told NBC News Lester Holt in an interview, “I think certainly when it is a matter of life of death, [get a ] second opinion every time. Don’t hesitate.”           

With cases like Monica Flagg’s or any other patient who has been misdiagnosed, the world learns that it is important in serious cases – and even not-so-serious ones- if you have doubts, to always get a second opinion just to avoid being misdiagnosed. Patients should also write down their symptoms and take notes at their appointments . Also, according to WebMD, go through your family tree and look at what diseases and conditions run through it. It’s important to know your family’s medical line so you’ll be able to see if you have it or not.