Physician May Be Liable For Malpractice By Assuming Blood Is Due To Hemorrhoids When It Is Actually From Colon Cancer

Being told one has colon cancer tends to bring up dread in nearly all of people. It can hence feel very reassuring to hear your doctor say that you merely have hemorrhoids. That there is no need to be anxious about the blood in your stool. But this reassurance ought to not be given until the physician has eliminated the chance of colon cancer (and other possibly serious gastrointestinal problems). Else, you might not find out that you have colon cancer until it is too late. Should a doctor conclude without testing considers that complaints of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding by a patient are the result of hemorrhoids and it later turns out to be colon cancer, that physician might not have met the standard of care. Under those circimstances, the patient might be able to pursue a lawsuit against that doctor.

In excess of 10 million people have hemorrhoids and another 1,000,000 new instances of hemorrhoids will likely occur this year as opposed to a little more than the 100 thousand new instances of colon cancer that will be diagnosed . In addition, not all colon cancers bleed. In the event that they do, the bleeding could be non-consistent. Also subject to the location of the cancer in the colon, the blood might not even be seen in the stool. Perhaps it is in part as a result of the difference in the quantity of cases being identified that a number of physicians simply suppose that blood in the stool or rectal bleeding is due to hemorrhoids. This amounts to playing the odds. A doctor making this diagnosis will be correct over 90% of the time. It sounds sensible, doesn’t it? The difficulty, though, is that if the physician is inaccurate in this diagnosis, the patient may not find out he or she has colon cancer until it has reached a late stage, perhaps to the point where treatment is no longer effective.

For this reason doctors commonly advise that a colonoscopy should be done without delay if a patient has blood in the stool or rectal bleeding. A colonoscopy is a method whereby a flexible scope with a camera on the end is employed to visualize the interior of the colon. Should anything be discovered in the course of the procedure, it may be possible to take it out immediately if it is not very big. In any case, it will be biopsied to check for cancer. Providing no cancer is found from the colonoscopy may colon cancer be ruled out as a cause of the blood.

But, should the cancer not be discovered until it has spread outside of the colon and has reached the lymph nodes, the person's five year survival rate will generally be roughly 53%. Aside from surgery to remove the tumor and adjacent areas of the colon treatment for this stage of colon cancer calls for chemotherapy in an attempt to eliminate any cancer that may remain in the body. By the time the cancer reaches distant organs such as the liver, lungs, or brain, the individual's 5 year survival rate is cut down to close to eight percent. Now treatment may entail surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and other medications. Treatment may or may not still be effective once the cancer is this advanced. If treatment ceases to be helpful, colon cancer is fatal. This year, about 48,000 men and women will pass away in the U.S. from metastatic colon cancer.

By telling the patient that blood in the stool or rectal bleeding as caused by hemorrhoids without performing the proper tests to eliminate the possibility of colon cancer, a doctor places the patient at risk of not knowing that the patient colon cancer before it reaches an advanced, possibly untreatable, stage. This might amount to a departure from the accepted standard of medical care and might end in a medical malpractice claim.

By: J. Hernandez

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Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting complex injury cases, including Medical Malpractice cases. You can learn more about cases involving advanced colon cancer and stage 4 colon cancer by visitng the websites