How Missing Symptoms Of Colon Cancer May Lead To A Medical Malpractice Lawsuit

One of the types of claims handled by a cancer attorney are ones that deal with colon cancer. One of the issues that most commonly arises is due to a physician having reassured a person that the blood they found in their stool was from hemorrhoids when in reality the patient actually has colon cancer. What legal choices does the patient have in these circumstances?

Doctors typically advise that in case a patient notices rectal bleeding or blood in the stool, testing needs to be conducted to make sure the patient does not have colon cancer. The test that is often used to rule out colon cancer is called a colonoscopy. This involves using a flexible tube with a camera on the end to examine the inside of the colon. If growths (polyps or tumors) are discovered, they can be sampled (by biopsy) and possibly removed. The samples (biopsies) are then analyzed for the existence of cancer. If there is no cancer, then colon cancer can frequently be eliminated as a source of the blood. Unfortunately, all too often, a patient's physician will just attribute the blood to hemorrhoids without referring the patient to a specialistand without ordering any testing, such as a colonoscopy, in order to make sure there is no cancer.

Colon cancer is a disease that progresses over time. As it advances it gets tougher to treat effectively. For instance, while it is contained inside the colon treatment normally involves surgery to take out the tumor and adjacent portions of the colon. Chemotherapy is usually not part of the treatment of stage 1 and stage 2 except that it may be given to an individual who is young as a preventative measure. With surgery, someone with stage 1 or stage 2 has an excellent likelihood of outliving the disease for at least 5 years after diagnosis. The relative 5-year survival rate is more than 90% for stage 1 and 73% for stage 2.

By the time the cancer has spread outside the colon. At this stage treatment requires both surgery and chemotherapy (perhaps with additional drugs ). The relative 5-year survival rate for stage 3 is fifty three percent. If it progress to stage 4, the relative 5-year survival rate is lowered to around 8%. Treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and other medications may or may not still be effective. Once treatment stops being effective, the disease becomes fatal. Roughly 48,000 people will die from colon cancer this year alone.

If the individual with rectal bleeding undergoes a colonoscopy and the tumor is found prior to spreading to the lymph nodes or to other organs, it can often be taken out during the colonoscopy if it is sufficiently small or by surgically removing the part of the colon containing the tumor. Thus a delay in diagnosis and treatment that is long enough for the cancer to get an advanced stage. When this is the case, the patient will be required to undergo additional treatments and will have a drastically lowered chance of living for at least five years beyond diagnosis. Based on the laws of the jurisdiction in which the doctor caused the delay, this may give rise to a case for medical malpractice, or in the most extreme case, for wrongful death.