Settlement secured for a client left infertile as a result of failure to diagnose and treat testicular torsion.

Toni Bedward, Solicitor in our Medical Negligence secured compensation for a client in a claim against Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust as a result of a failure to diagnose and treat Testicular Torsion.

Key points

• The claim was settled for £50,000.00, a very significant increase compared to the valuation of the claim on the Defendant’s admissions alone.

• The Defendant only admitted that they breached the duty of care owed to our client, but they did not admit that our client’s injury, (particularly his loss of fertility) was related to their breach of duty. However, they paid damages reflective of our own assessment of the claim to include damages for the loss of the chance to have biological children.

• The settlement figure our client obtained was achieved as a result of a compelling Letter of Claim setting out the allegations of negligence against the Defendant, obtaining strong expert evidence to the effect that our client had lost all chance of conceiving children naturally and that his sperm might have been capable of being preserved if the Defendant had acted in accordance with good medical practice.

• The settlement ensures that our client can have fertility treatment to start a family with his wife.

What happened? The factual background

Our client, aged 30 at the date of the negligence suffered the loss of his only testicle following the Trust’s delay in diagnosis. He had one testicle as his other testicle was removed as a child as it was undescended at birth.

One afternoon our client started suffering from pain in his testicle. This became gradually worse throughout the evening and into the following day at which point he realised the pain was not going away and he had to go to hospital. Our client attended a local urgent care centre where they recognised that he could have an infection or he could have a testicular torsion, which is a medical emergency. Due to the limitations of the urgent care centre’s facilities, he was advised to go to hospital to rule out testicular torsion.

Our client was assessed at Darent Valley Hospital. There were no signs of infection and because the clinicians did not appreciate that he was at a higher risk of testicular torsion due to having an undescended testicle at birth, the clinicians failed to exclude testicular torsion as a diagnosis and he was discharged with antibiotics. 3 days later,

our client had an ultrasound scan at another hospital which confirmed that all blood flow to his testicle had stopped and it had effectively died.

Due to the misdiagnosis, the time frame for being able to save his testicle had passed and it would have to be removed. The teams at Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital delayed surgery for a further 6 days, meaning that our client was left with a dead testicle in situ. Further the teams did not attempt to preserve our client’s sperm until 16 days after they confirmed that his testicle was dead.

Testicular torsion is a medical emergency which requires urgent surgical exploration to untwist the testicle and fix it in place. There is a common misconception that a testicular torsion has to be surgically corrected by 6 hours after the onset of pain. However, our urology expert identified literature supporting testicular survival up to 19 hours post the onset of pain.

Unfortunately, due to our client’s late presentation at hospital we could not establish on the balance of probabilities that his testicle would have been saved even without the Defendant’s failure to diagnose testicular torsion. However, we argued that due to the delay in removing our client’s testicle and the delay in attempting sperm preservation, our client lost all chances of being able to preserve viable sperm. We argued that if he had been correctly diagnosed and treated when he first went to hospital, even if the testicle would have to be removed, sperm preservation could have been attempted promptly so that our client would have had the opportunity to undergo fertility treatment using his own sperm, rather than using donor sperm.

Our urology expert indicated that there was a chance of our client having viable sperm if sperm preservation was attempted when the client presented to hospital and we valued the claim on this basis, even though it was unlikely that the client’s testicle could have been saved.

Toni is incredibly proud of this settlement which provided her client the money to undergo fertility treatment with his wife and fulfil their dreams of having children.

If you feel you have a claim, our team of clinical negligence solicitors are here to listen and help you work out whether compensation may be available to you. Please do not hesitate to contact us at Taylor Rose on 020 3540 4444 or email Toni directly.