A US woman has filed a lawsuit against a health group alleging that she was wrongly diagnosed with cancer and underwent an unneeded hysterectomy because of a labelling error, reports MedPage Today.
Cassandra Barksdale and her attorneys have sued Kaiser Permanente – a major integrated managed care consortium that combines health insurance coverage and medical services into a single system – saying the mix-up led to the surgery and months of physical and emotional pain.
The lawsuit alleges that another patient’s tissue sample was mistakenly labelled as belonging to Barksdale, who at 43 then underwent a full hysterectomy on 15 May 2025, and was told she would get instructions about chemotherapy.
It’s unclear how the mix-up occurred.
“She had gone into Kaiser Permanente looking for answers, and left with a diagnosis that did not belong to her. And every step that was taken after that was based on misinformation,” said her attorney.
Barksdale had sought help at Kaiser Permanente Southwood Comprehensive Medical Centre in Georgia in early 2025 for heavy bleeding and fibroids in and around the uterus. She underwent a biopsy on 10 March 2025.
She said that after she got the biopsy results on 17 March, she lived for months believing she had an aggressive type of cancer, sending her and her sons into a deep depression: she even started making funeral plans with them.
Months later, in September, Barksdale was told that a DNA analysis found the tissue sample showing an aggressive form of endometrial uterine cancer belonged to a different patient and not to her, the lawsuit says.
Representatives for Kaiser Permanente said in a statement that she should not have experienced this.
“We have highly trained staff and very thorough processes in place to prevent errors like this from taking place. After this occurred last year, we took immediate steps to ensure it could not happen again. We …are committed to working with Ms Barksdale and her counsel to resolve this in the most accountable way we can.”
It is not clear just how often pathology samples are mislabelled or mixed-up during medical testing.
In 2019, an Ohio woman filed a similar lawsuit saying a biopsy error led to a misdiagnosis of lung cancer and unneeded surgery.
And researchers studying prostate cancer discovered three cases of biopsy sample misidentification over two years, according to a 2011 research paper.
Labs have turned to a number of best practices to try and prevent errors, including barcode systems for specimen labelling and point-of-care testing.
The Georgia lawsuit asks for unspecified damages.
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Woman wins case after cancer misdiagnosis and two years of treatment
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