If You Have Symptoms Of Colon Cancer Your Doctor Ought To Order The Proper Tests Or Risk A Malpracti

Being told one has colon cancer tends to raise worry in most of people. It can thus feel quite reassuring to hear your physician say that you simply have hemorrhoids. That there is no need to worry about the blood in your stool. Yet this reassurance should not be given until the doctor has eliminated the likelihood of colon cancer (and other possibly dangerous gastrointestinal problems). Else, you may not discover that you have colon cancer before it is too late. Should a physician conclude without testing assumes that claims of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding by a patient are the result of hemorrhoids and it later is discovered that the patient had colon cancer all along, that doctor may not have met the standard of care. Under those circimstances, the patient may be able to pursue a lawsuit against that doctor.

It is projected that there are more than 10 million people with hemorrhoids and another million new cases of hemorrhoids will probably occur this year as opposed to a little more than the 100 thousand new instances of colon cancer that will be identified . In addition, colon cancers do not always. When they do, the bleeding may be intermittent. Also depending on where the cancer is in the colon, the blood might not even be apparent in the stool. Possibly it is in part as a result of the difference in the quantity of cases being diagnosed that some physicians basically consider that blood in the stool or rectal bleeding is because of hemorrhoids. This amounts to gambling, pure and simple. A physician making this diagnosis will be right more than ninety percent of the time. It appears realistic, right? The problem, though, is that if the physician is inaccurate in this diagnosis, the patient may not learn he or she has colon cancer before it has developed to a late stage, maybe to the point where treatment is no longer effective.

In the event colon cancer is found while still contained within the colon, the individual's chances of surviving the cancer are over eighty percent. The five year survival rate is a statistical indicator of the percentage of individuals who are still alive a minimum of five years following diagnosis. Treatment protocols for early stage colon cancer normally entails only surgery in order to remove the tumor and surrounding areas of the colon. Based on factors like the stage of the cancer and the patients medical history (including family medical history), how old the person is, and the patient's physical condition, chemotherapy may or may not be necessary.

For this reason physicians frequently recommend that a colonoscopy ought to be completed right away if a patient complains of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding. A colonoscopy is a procedure that uses a flexible tube with a camera on the end is used to see the inside of the colon. If growths (polyps or tumors) are found, they can be removed (if small enough) or sampled and examined for the existence of cancer (by biopsy). Colon cancer may properly be eliminated as the reason for the blood only if a colonoscopy locates no cancer

As a result of diagnosing complaints of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding as caused by hemorrhoids without doing the correct tests to eliminate the possibility of colon cancer, a physician places the patient at risk of not finding out he or she has colon cancer until it reaches an advanced, possibly no longer treatable, stage. This may constitute a departure from the accepted standard of medical care and might lead to a medical malpractice claim.