Patient Might Have A Claim For Medical Malpractice On Account Of Doctor’s Failure To Diagnose Colon Cancer

All too often when a patient says “Doctor, I am spotting blood in my stool” the doctor replies, "You probably merely have hemorrhoids.”

However, some time subsequently this patient finds out that the bleeding was in fact the result of a cancerous tumor in the colon. The individual now has advanced colon cancer that has reached the lymph nodes or even to a distant organ, for example the liver or the lungs. What legal choices does the patient have in these circumstances?

The first thing to note is that most doctors concur that when someone complains of rectal bleeding or blood in the stool a colonoscopy should be performed so as to learn the cause of the blood. The colonoscopy helps establish if the blood is from colon cancer or something else like hemorrhoids. However merely supposing that the blood is the result of hemorrhoids risks missing a cancer.

Colon cancer is estimated to kill around 48,000 men and women this year. Colon cancer becomes fatal after it grows and progresses outside of the colon getting into the bloodstream through lymph nodes and taking hold in additional organs like the liver and the lungs. After the cancer gets to that point the person's options for treatments are limited and the possibility that the patient will survive the cancer are substantially diminished. Treatments, which can include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and other medications, may or may not work.

If at some point treatment no longer works, the cancer becomes fatal. But it takes time for the cancer to reach that point. It ordinarily starts as a small group of cells. Over time these cells grow and get outside the colon where they then start spreading and growing more.

If the patient 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 extracting the part of the colon containing the tumor. So a delay in diagnosis and treatment that is sufficient to allow the cancer to get an advanced stage. When this is the case, the patient will need to undergo additional treatments and will have a greatly decreased likelihood of survival. Depending on the laws of the jurisdiction in which the doctor was responsible for the delay, this may give rise to a claim for medical malpractice, or in the most severe case, for wrongful death.

By: J. Hernandez

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Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting medical malpractice cases and wrongful death cases. You can learn more about cases involving colon cancer and other cancer matters including metastatic breast cancer by visiting the websites