Beauty influencer Jessica Pettway, 36, died from cervical cancer in March 2024 after receiving multiple incorrect medical diagnoses and nearly nine months after the beauty influencer revealed that doctors misdiagnosed her with fibroids.
Pettway recalled how she began experiencing “intense vaginal bleeding” in June 2022. She required multiple hospital stays between July and January 2023, with doctors repeatedly misdiagnosing her. In February 2023, she visited an oncologist.
“On Feb. 8th, 2023, he performed an outpatient biopsy on me,” Pettway wrote. “When I woke up from the anesthesia, he casually said, ‘Yep you have stage 3 cervical cancer.’ It turns out, it was not a fibroid, but cancer. I was misdiagnosed all this time.”’
KFF Health News reported that 12 million people receive incorrect medical diagnoses annually in the United States, with certain patients being at higher risk.
David Newman-Toker, MD, Ph.D., the director of the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence, said misdiagnosis rates are 20% to 30% higher for women and racial and ethnic minorities than for white men. Researchers describe misdiagnosis as an urgent public health issue.
See “Beauty influencer Jessica Pettway, 36, dies from cervical cancer after fibroid misdiagnosis” (March 20, 2024)
