Woman, 72, shocked by prostate cancer diagnosis rushes to doctor after reading test results
The medical report indicated this type of cancer, but it was all due to human error. The patient will not take legal action against the hospital.
A 72-year-old woman from the Greek city of Patras experienced a scare she’ll never forget. She visited the doctor due to bladder discomfort—nothing unusual at first. But after undergoing tests, the results of her CT scan revealed something unexpected. In fact, something impossible.
When reading the medical report, the woman saw she had cancer—but what shocked her was the type: prostate cancer. Alarmed and horrified, she rushed back to the hospital to find out what was going on. How could she possibly have prostate cancer?
“I saw the result and was shocked because it said I had cancer. Then, in my panic, I noticed it said prostate cancer. I looked again, saw my name on the paper, and went straight to the doctor,” she told Greek outlet ANT1.
It turned out to be a misunderstanding. The report had been incorrectly written, although it’s unclear whether it was a diagnostic error or a mistake by the person transcribing the test results. Despite the incident, the woman has decided not to take legal action against the hospital, and the ordeal will remain just a frightful memory.
The Skene’s glands: the ‘female prostate’
This case raises a curious question: can a woman have prostate cancer? Technically, women do not have a prostate gland, so under normal circumstances, they cannot develop prostate cancer. However, there’s a rare exception.
Women have what are known as Skene glands, located at the front of the vagina near the urethra. These glands share some structural and functional characteristics with the male prostate, which is why they’re sometimes referred to as the “female prostate.”
Cancer of the Skene glands is extremely rare, accounting for less than 0.003% of all female genital tract cancers. That said, documented cases exist. One example involved a 71-year-old woman who was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the Skene glands after experiencing painless hematuria (blood in the urine) for two years.
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