Ways In Which Malpractice Claim May Follow A Delay In The Diagnosis Of Patient's Colon Cancer

Just the thought that one may have colon cancer tends to bring up worry in most of people. It can therefore feel quite reassuring for your doctor say that you simply have hemorrhoids. That there is no need to worry about the blood in your stool. However this reassurance should only come after the doctor has ruled out the likelihood of colon cancer (and other possibly serious gastrointestinal issues). Else, you might not find out that you have colon cancer until it is too late. If a physician who automatically assumes that reports of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding by a patient are due to hemorrhoids and it eventually turns out to be colon cancer, that doctor might have committed medical malpractice and the patient might be able to pursue a lawsuit against that physician.

It is generally thought that there are currently over 10 million people with hemorrhoids and another 1,000,000 new cases of hemorrhoids will likely arise this year as opposed to a little over the 100 thousand new instances of colon cancer that will be detected this year. In addition, colon cancers do not always. If they do, the bleeding could be non-consistent. Also based on where the cancer is in the colon, the blood might not actually be seen in the stool. Maybe it is in part due to the difference in the volume of cases being diagnosed that some physicians basically think that the presence of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding is due to hemorrhoids. This amounts to playing the odds. A physician who reaches this conclusion will be correct greater than ninety percent of the time. It appears sensible, doesn’t it? The problem, however, is that if the doctor is inaccurate in this diagnosis, the patient may not learn he or she has colon cancer before it has reached a late stage, possibly even to where treatment is no longer effective.

When colon cancer is detected while still contained within the colon, the individual's chances of surviving the cancer are over eighty percent. The 5 year survival rate is a statistical guage of the percentage of individuals who are still alive at least 5 years following diagnosis. Treatment for early stage colon cancer frequently entails just surgery in order to remove the tumor and adjacent portions of the colon. Depending on factors such as the stage of the cancer and the patient’s medical history , age, and the individual's physical condition, chemotherapy may or may not be recommended.

For this reason physicians frequently recommend that a colonoscopy should be done immediately if someone has blood in the stool or rectal bleeding. A colonoscopy is a method that uses a flexible scope with a camera on the end is employed to examine the inside of the colon. If growths (polyps or tumors) are detected, they can be taken out (if sufficiently small) or sampled and checked for the existence of cancer (by biopsy). Providing no cancer is detected from the colonoscopy can colon cancer be ruled out as a cause of the blood.

As a result of diagnosing complaints of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding as resulting from hemorrhoids while not completing the right tests to eliminate the possibility of colon cancer, a doctor places the patient at risk of not learning that the patient colon cancer until it progresses to an advanced, possibly no longer treatable, stage. This might constitute a departure from the accepted standard of medical care and might end in a malpractice case.

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 advanced colon cancer and other cancer matters including stage 4 breast cancer by visiting his website