It's a shocking state of affairs. I had an aunt who complained of back pain from the mid-Nineties. The doctor just gave her various pain meds, then in the summer of 2000, she woke up one morning unable to get out of bed. The doctor arrived, an ambulance arrived, she was taken to hospital in Sheffield and from there straight to a hospice where she died five weeks later. Her back pain had been caused by kidney cancer but no-one had even thought of doing a scan. If she had been my mother, I'd have had a good shot at a malpractice suit, but as it was, I had no say in it so I still don't know if her family could have won such a case - or even if anyone would have taken it on