The Risks Faced By Individuals If Their Physicians Do Not Follow Colon Cancer Screening Standards

Colon cancer is the second major reason for deaths resulting from cancer

. Each year, roughly forty eight thousand people will die as a result of colon cancer. Many of these deaths might be avoided with early detection and treatment through standard colon cancer screening in advance of when symptoms appear.

When the cancer is found while it is still a small polyp while undergoing a routine screening procedure, for example, a colonoscopy, the polyp can generally be taken out during the colonoscopy without the requirement for the surgical removal of any segment of the colon. If,however, the polyp becomes a tumor and reaches Stage 1 or Stage 2, the tumor and a portion of the colon on each side is surgical removed. The relative 5-year survival rate is over ninety percent for Stage 1 and 73% for Stage II.

By the point the cancer gets to a Stage 3, surgery is not enough. The individual will, furthermore, need to have chemotherapy. The relative 5-year survival rate falls to fifty three percent, depending on such factors as the quantity of lymph nodes that contain cancer.

By the time the colon cancer gets to the fourth Stage, treatment may necessitate the use of chemotherapy and perhaps other drugs and even surgery on other organs. Should the dimensions and number of tumors in different organs (like the liver and lungs) are sufficiently few, surgery to get rid of the cancer from those other organs may be the initial treatment, then chemotherapy. In some cases the dimensions or number of tumors in the different organs removes the option of surgery as part of the treatment.

If chemotherapy and different drugs are able to reduce the number and dimensions of these tumors, surgery might at that point turn out to be a viable follow up treatment. Otherwise, chemotherapy and other drugs (perhaps through clinical trials) may temporarily halt or limit the ongoing spread of the cancer. With metastasis the person's likelihood of surviving the cancer for greater than five years after diagnosis drops to around eight percent.

The statistics are clear. The time frame when the cancer is found and treated makes a dramatic difference. If discovered and treated early, the patient has an excellent chance of surviving the cancer. As detection and treatment is delayed, the chances start shifting against the person so that once the colon cancer gets to the lymph nodes, the probability is nearly 50/50. And the chances decrease greatly when the cancer reaches Stage 4.

However, all too often physicians fail to suggest standard cancer screening to their patients. When the cancer is eventually discovered - frequently because the tumor has become so large that it is causing blockage, since the patient has unexplained anemia that is getting progressively worse, or because the person begins to detect other indications - the colon cancer is a Stage 3 or even a Stage 4. The individual now faces a very different prognosis than if the cancer had been detected early through routine screening.

In medical malpractice terms, the person has sustained a "loss of chance" of a better recovery. In other words, because the doctor failed to advisev that the patient undergo routine screening test, the cancer is now much more advanced and the individual has a much lower likelihood of outliving the cancer. The failure of a doctor to advise the individual have screening options for colon cancer might constitute medical malpractice.

by: Joseph Hernandez

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