subject: How Malpractice Case Might Result From Delayed Diagnosis Of Colon Cancer [print this page] Even the idea that one may have colon cancer tends to raise fear in most of us. It can thus feel quite reassuring for your physician tell you that you merely have hemorrhoids and there is no need to worry about the blood in your stool. Yet this reassurance should only come after the physician has eliminated the chance of colon cancer (and other possibly dangerous gastrointestinal issues). Otherwise, you may not learn that you have colon cancer before it is too late.
Should a doctor decide without testing assumes that complaints of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding by a patient are the result of hemorrhoids and it subsequently turns out to be colon cancer, that doctor might not have met the standard of care. Under those circumstances, the patient may be able to pursue a lawsuit against that physician.
It is generally thought that there are more than 10 million people with hemorrhoids and another 1,000,000 new instances of hemorrhoids will probably arise this year as opposed to a little more than the 100 thousand new instances of colon cancer that will be diagnosed . Further, not all colon cancers bleed. When they do, the bleeding could be non-consistent. And subject to the location of the cancer in the colon, the blood may not even be visible in the stool.
Possibly it is simply because of the difference in the quantity of cases being diagnosed that some physicians just consider that blood in the stool or rectal bleeding is because of hemorrhoids. This is playing the odds. A physician who reaches this conclusion is going to be correct greater than ninety percent of the time. It appears realistic, right? The concern, though, is that if the doctor is inaccurate in this diagnosis, the patient may not discover he or she has colon cancer before it has reached a late stage, perhaps even to the point where it is no longer treatable.
This is why doctors typically recommend that a colonoscopy should be done right away if someone complains of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding. A colonoscopy is a procedure that uses a flexible tube with a camera on the end is employed to visualize the interior of the colon. Should anything be detected during the procedure, it might be possible to take it out right away if it is not very large. In any case, it will be biopsied to check for cancer. Only if no cancer is found may colon cancer be eliminated as a cause of the blood.
But, if the cancer is not detected until it has spread beyond the colon and has reached the lymph nodes, the individual's five year survival rate will generally be approximately fifty three percent In addition to surgery to remove the tumor and surrounding areas of the colon treatment for this stage of colon cancer calls for chemotherapy in an effort to eliminate any cancer that might remain in the body. When the cancer spreads to other organs such as the liver, lungs, or brain, the patient's 5 year survival rate is cut down to roughly 8%. Now treatment may entail surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and other medications. Treatment might no longer be helpful the moment the cancer is this advanced. If treatment ceases to be effective, colon cancer is fatal. This year, around forty eight thousand individuals will die in the U.S. from colon cancer metastasis.
As a result of diagnosing complaints of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding as caused by hemorrhoids while not performing the appropriate tests to eliminate the possibility of colon cancer, a physician puts the patient at risk of not knowing he or she has colon cancer until it reaches an advanced, possibly no longer treatable, stage. This may constitute a departure from the accepted standard of medical care and might bring about a medical malpractice case.
by: Joseph Hernandez
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