A British teenager died just three weeks after being diagnosed with a brain tumour after the doctors misdiagnosed his condition as just an ear infection.
19-year-old Niall Kavanagh, from Suffolk, had collapsed during a football game in September 2021.
Even upon being taken to the doctor, his early symptoms were dismissed.
Despite being evaluated for two consecutive days, doctors only suspected only an ear infection.
After his symptoms persisted over weeks, he lost his ability to talk and walk. After that, his condition deteriorated rapidly and he could only communicate in gestures.
Niall lost his ability to speak and even suffered a seizure when he stopped responding completely. He could not coordinate either.
It was after a scan that doctors ascertained that there was a lesion in the brain – an aggressive brain tumour which needed emergency surgery to save his life.
After the surgery, despite almost no hopes of survival, Niall recovered and even spoke for three weeks, breathed on his own and even used his phone.
However, following the procedure to remove the shunt from the head, he failed to regain consciousness.
After being returned to the ICU, he stopped responding like before – his brain started to swell and doctors could not do anything to save him. The teen passed away on November 1 from brain stem death – three weeks later.
The grief-stricken mother is calling for greater cancer research after her teenage son died after a misdiagnosis.
The devastated mum believes that, had her son been correctly diagnosed in the first instance, his life could have been saved. She’s now helped to start a petition calling for greater research into brain cancer.
‘I’ve signed the petition and encourage others to as well, because money for brain tumour research is so desperately needed,’ she said.
