A referral from a health centre to a hospital was never sent, and Julia Dang, 30, waited three months for a mammogram while the lump in her breast grew from about one to two centimetres to just over six centimetres, SVT reported.
Dang contacted Kry vårdcentral in Sickla in early May after discovering the lump. After a short visit she was told a referral would be sent on. Nothing happened.
When she began calling around herself, she found the referral had never been sent, and she had to contact both the hospital and the health centre several times before a mammogram was carried out three months after the first visit. A doctor states in her medical record that "the delayed handling constitutes a deviation from intended prioritisation and may have led to delayed diagnosis."
Kry declined to be interviewed and answered in writing: "Every assessment is a professional trade-off made by people, and that means it can sometimes go wrong, even when everyone does their utmost."
SVT found another case at the same health centre, where a woman sought care repeatedly over seven months before she was diagnosed with rectal cancer. Across primary care in Region Stockholm, the number of complaints about diagnosis rose from 15 in 2024 to 35 in 2025. The review says patients describe symptoms that were not taken seriously, examinations and referrals that were delayed, and poor follow-up of test and x-ray results.
One patient had a long-lasting cough and asked several times to be examined. An x-ray was carried out only later and showed stage 2 lung cancer. A patient with prolonged swelling and pain in a knee was referred to physiotherapy and later paid for an MRI, which led to a diagnosis of bone cancer.
Another woman sought care for years for stomach and back pain and bowel problems, and a malignant tumour was later found in the same place where a change had shown up on an earlier x-ray. A young woman who reported a lump in her armpit was at first refused a referral for a mammogram, according to the complaint, and the examination she received after insisting showed breast cancer.