A blind woman's medical malpractice action against her doctor cannot be dismissed as time-barred because she has raised factual issues about whether the applicable statute of limitations was tolled under the continuous treatment doctrine, a Manhattan appeals court has ruled.

The doctrine, considered one of the most effective means of overcoming the statute of limitations in medical malpractice cases, provides that, in actions based on a failure to diagnose a condition, the limitations period is tolled as long as the symptoms being treated indicate the condition's existence.

In a lawsuit filed March 5, 2010, plaintiff Michelle Lewis claimed that Frederick Rutkovsky, her primary care doctor, failed to diagnose a meningioma—a benign brain tumor—despite her visiting him intermittently between April 1998 and Sept. 5, 2007, and at times complaining of migraine headaches, blurred vision and related symptoms.