Patient May Have A Lawsuit For Medical Malpractice As A Consequence Of Physician's Delay In Diagnosi

It is not uncommon for a medical malpractice attorney to be contacted by a potential

client who starts by saying something like, My doctor kept telling me I only had hemorrhoids and I have now been diagnosed with advanced colon cancer. What makes this happen and what options does the person and his or her family have if it does?

The first thing to note is that most doctors concur that when someone presents with rectal bleeding or blood in the stool a colonoscopy needs to be performed in order to identify the cause of the blood. The colonoscopy helps establish whether the blood is the result of colon cancer or something else such as hemorrhoids. However only supposing that the blood is the result of hemorrhoids risks not detecting a cancer.

Colon cancer is a disease that progresses over time. As it advances it gets more difficult to treat successfully. For instance, when the disease is in stage 1 or stage 2, it is still contained inside the wall of the colon. Treatment for these stages generally involves surgery to remove the tumor and adjacent parts of the colon. Chemotherapy is frequently not part of the treatment of stage 1 and stage 2 unless it may be given to an individual who is young as a precautionary measure. With surgery, the person with stage 1 or stage 2 has a good likelihood of surviving 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 progresses to stage 3, it has spread outside the colon. At this stage treatment requires both surgery and chemotherapy (perhaps with other drugs as well). The relative 5-year survival rate for stage 3 is fifty three percent. If it gets to stage 4, the relative 5-year survival rate is reduced to roughly eight percent. 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 gets a colonoscopy and the tumor is discovered 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 section 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. This means the patient will have to undergo additional treatments and will have a significantly decreased likelihood of living for at least five years beyond diagnosis. Depending on the laws of the jurisdiction in which the physician caused the delay, this may give rise to a case for medical malpractice, or in the most severe case, for wrongful death.

by: Joseph Hernandez

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