Justice for Pennsylvania’s Sarcoma Misdiagnosis Victims
If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with sarcoma — and you suspect the diagnosis came later than it should have — you are not wrong to ask whether something went wrong. Sarcoma is a rare and often aggressive cancer. Because sarcoma is rare, the diagnosis is often delayed. Regardless, doctors are expected to recognize the warning signs of potentially life-threatening cancers like sarcoma and take steps to make a timely diagnosis.
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Article written by Gregory Unatin, Esq. Greg is a managing partner in the law firm of Lupetin & Unatin, a medical malpractice law firm located in Pittsburgh and serving Western Pennsylvania.
We investigate cases in which medical negligence has resulted in a delayed diagnosis of rare, aggressive cancer such as sarcoma.
Dangerously Deceptive – the Problem of Delayed Diagnosis of Sarcoma
Sarcoma is frequently mistaken for something harmless. A lump in the thigh, upper arm, or abdomen is easy to dismiss as a cyst, a lipoma (benign, fatty lump), or the remnant of an old injury. Doctors — including experienced primary care physicians — often tell patients to watch and wait, or simply reassure them that a mass is benign based on feel alone. The problem is that soft tissue sarcomas can look and feel deceptively ordinary in their early stages, and the window for effective treatment is longest when the cancer is still confined to its site of origin.
Research from the National Cancer Institute documents the stakes clearly. When sarcoma is caught while still localized, roughly 83 percent of patients survive five years. Once the cancer has spread to distant organs — most commonly the lungs — that figure falls to approximately 16 percent. (SEER 22 Data, 2026). That gap is not a medical abstraction. It is the difference between a patient who undergoes surgery and returns to life, and a patient who faces chemotherapy, diminished function, and a shortened future. Months of unnecessary delay can move a patient from one side of that gap to the other.
Warning Signs of Sarcoma That Are Often Missed
The warning signs that should prompt immediate imaging and, when imaging is suspicious, a biopsy, include:
- A soft tissue mass that is larger than five centimeters, located deep beneath the skin’s surface, growing over weeks or months, or firm and fixed to the tissue around it;
- Pain at the site of a mass — particularly if it was not there before or is getting worse;
- Persistent or progressive swelling in a limb, especially without a clear history of injury;
- Vague abdominal fullness in the abdomen, back pain, or unexplained weight changes should not be dismissed as gastrointestinal issues without ruling out other causes.
The failure that runs through most of these cases is the same: a physician who assumes the more common, benign explanation without taking the step that would confirm or rule out something serious. Ordering an MRI is not excessive when a mass has the features described above. Referring a patient for biopsy is not overreacting. These are the minimum steps the standard of care requires. When they are not taken, and cancer advances as a result, that is the kind of medical failure that can form the basis of a malpractice claim.
The Cracks Where Doctors Miss Signs of Sarcoma
A delayed sarcoma diagnosis rarely results from a single mistake by a single physician. More often, it involves one or more failures across multiple medical specialties — the primary care doctor who did not order imaging, the radiologist who misread the scan, the pathologist who misclassified the biopsy, or the surgeon who operated without a proper workup. Any physician in that chain who departed from the standard of care and whose failure contributed to the delay may be a proper defendant in a malpractice claim.
The table below identifies the specialists most often involved in sarcoma misdiagnosis cases, describes what each was required to do, and explains how the failure typically occurs.
| Specialist | What the Standard of Care Requires | How the Diagnosis Is Missed or Delayed |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Care Physician / Internist | Recognize red-flag features of a soft tissue mass (size > 5 cm, deep location, rapid growth, firmness); order a timely MRI or CT; refer to an orthopedic oncologist or sarcoma specialist without delay. | Diagnoses the mass as a lipoma, cyst, or muscle strain based on physical exam alone; advises watchful waiting without imaging; repeats office visits over months without further workup. |
| Orthopedic Surgeon | Obtain cross-sectional imaging before any surgery on an undiagnosed mass; plan a proper biopsy; refer to a sarcoma center when imaging is suspicious. | Excises the mass without preoperative imaging or biopsy, assuming it is benign; performs an unplanned excision that contaminates the surgical field and compromises future treatment options. |
| Radiologist | Identify features of malignancy on MRI or CT (deep location, size > 5 cm, heterogeneous signal, enhancement, necrosis); recommend biopsy when those features are present; communicate findings clearly and urgently to the referring physician. | Interprets a suspicious mass as a post-traumatic hematoma, hemangioma, or benign lipoma; recommends routine follow-up imaging instead of biopsy; fails to flag the finding as urgent in the radiology report. |
| Pathologist | Accurately classify the tumor type and grade from biopsy tissue; use appropriate immunohistochemical stains and molecular testing; recommend expert review when the specimen is difficult or unusual; communicate a diagnosis of malignancy promptly. | Misclassifies a malignant tumor as benign; fails to order confirmatory stains; issues an equivocal report without recommending further evaluation. |
| Emergency Medicine Physician | Document incidental mass findings discovered on imaging; communicate those findings directly to the patient and the patient's primary care physician; ensure a referral to a specialist is in place before discharge. | Notes a suspicious mass on imaging in the radiology report but fails to inform the patient or arrange follow-up; discharges the patient without a referral, allowing the finding to fall through the cracks. |
| General Surgeon | Obtain imaging and biopsy before resecting an abdominal or retroperitoneal mass; refer to a sarcoma multidisciplinary team before definitive surgery; ensure adequate surgical margins (i.e. removes all cancer cells). | Resects a retroperitoneal or intra-abdominal mass without preoperative biopsy or sarcoma specialist input; achieves inadequate margins that require reoperation or render the tumor unresectable. |
| Oncologist (Medical or Radiation) | Recognize when a tumor's clinical behavior or pathology is inconsistent with the working diagnosis; request expert pathology re-review; refer to a sarcoma center if the diagnosis or treatment response is atypical. | Treats a mass under an incorrect diagnosis without seeking second-opinion pathology; fails to refer when the tumor does not respond as expected; delays initiating appropriate sarcoma-directed therapy. |
| Dermatologist | Biopsy any dermal or subcutaneous lesion with features inconsistent with a benign diagnosis; recognize angiosarcoma, dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans (DFSP), and epithelioid sarcoma as potential diagnoses for unusual skin lesions. | Diagnoses an angiosarcoma or DFSP as a bruise, vascular birthmark, or inflammatory skin condition; performs a superficial shave biopsy that fails to sample the lesion adequately; delays referral to a surgeon or oncologist. |
What a Lawsuit Can Do for You and Your Family
A medical malpractice case cannot undo a delayed diagnosis of sarcoma. But it can address the very real consequences that flow from it.
Financial compensation in these cases covers the costs that a delayed diagnosis generates: surgery that would not have been necessary, chemotherapy or radiation that a timely diagnosis might have avoided, rehabilitation, ongoing care, and the lost income of a patient who can no longer work as before.
When a patient’s life has been shortened, their work-life expectancy may also be cut short. Pennsylvania law allows recovery for future earnings and the economic support that an individual or family loses. These are called economic damages, and they are calculated based on the patient’s actual situation — their age, their occupation, the specific trajectory of their care.
Beyond financial losses, Pennsylvania law allows recovery for pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of the ability to enjoy life, and the physical and psychological burden related to the realities of a delayed diagnosis of sarcoma . A spouse may also bring a claim for loss of companionship and support.
If a patient does not survive, the family does not lose the right to pursue a claim. Pennsylvania law provides for wrongful death and survival actions that allow the estate and family members to recover for the losses related to the avoidable diagnosis of advanced sarcoma — including the patient’s suffering before death, lost earning capacity, and the grief and economic loss the family bears. These cases can, and often do, proceed after the patient has died.
At Lupetin & Unatin, we advance all costs associated with the case — medical record retrieval, expert review, and litigation expenses. Our clients pay nothing out of pocket. We handle the case on a contingency fee basis, which means we collect no fee unless we recover compensation on your behalf.
Frequently Asked Questions
You probably cannot know yet, and you should not have to figure that out on your own. We obtain your medical records, organize the timeline of your diagnosis, and submit everything to board-certified medical experts — physicians who practice in the same specialty as the doctors being evaluated. After that review, we give you an honest assessment. Many cases that seem uncertain at the outset have real merit once the records are in front of the right expert. We would rather tell you plainly that a case does not meet our standard than pursue something that will not hold up.
No. The legal process works around you. You are not required to appear at depositions during active treatment unless you choose to, and the case can be managed in a way that places no burden on your medical schedule. Our job is to handle the legal work; your job is to focus on your health. Many of our clients have been in active treatment throughout their case, and we have structured the representation accordingly.
The case does not end with you. If a client dies from their disease during the course of litigation, Pennsylvania law allows the case to continue through the estate and through wrongful death claims brought by surviving family members. Families who have already lost someone to sarcoma can bring these claims directly. A case can reach resolution — through settlement or verdict — regardless of whether the original plaintiff is alive to see it. If you are concerned about this, we will walk you through exactly how it works for your situation.
It may not be. Pennsylvania’s two-year statute of limitations for medical malpractice runs from the date you discovered — or reasonably should have discovered — that a medical error contributed to your harm. In cancer cases, that clock often starts later than people assume, because patients frequently do not learn of a missed diagnostic opportunity until well after the original failure occurred. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Yanakos v. UPMC also eliminated the old seven-year outer deadline, meaning there is no absolute cutoff beyond the discovery rule. If you are unsure whether your time has run, call us. We will give you a straightforward answer.
Free Consultation — No Fee Unless We Win
If you or a family member was diagnosed with sarcoma after months or years of symptoms that were dismissed, misinterpreted, or ignored, we encourage you to call us. A phone call does not commit you to anything — it is the first step toward understanding whether a medical failure contributed to the harm you have experienced. We serve patients and families throughout Pennsylvania from our office in Pittsburgh’s Grant Building.