Physician May Be Liable For Malpractice By Not Acting According To Colon Cancer Screening Guidelines

The second largest number of cancer deaths is from colon cancer.

. Every year, around 48,000 people will die as a result of colon cancer. Many of these deaths might be avoided with early detection and treatment by standard colon cancer testing before symptoms develop.

If the disease is detected as a small polyp in the course of a regularly scheduled screening test, such as a colonoscopy, the polyp might be able to be taken out during the procedure. At this point, there is no requirement for the surgical removal of any segment of the colon. Once the polyp grows to the point where it becomes cancerous and gets to Stage I or Stage II, the tumor and a section of the colon on both sides is surgical taken out. The relative 5-year survival rate is over 90% for Stage 1 and seventy three percent for Stage II.

If the cancer gets to Stage 3, surgery is not enough and the person also needs to undergo chemotherapy. At this stage the chances that the individual will outlive the cancer by at least five years drops to 53%, depending on such variables as the quantity of lymph nodes that have cancer.

By the time the colon cancer gets to the fourth Stage, treatment might call for the use of chemotherapy and perhaps additional drugs and even surgery on other organs. In case the dimensions and number of tumors in different organs (for example, the liver and lungs) are small enough, surgery to remove the cancer from those other organs may be the first treatment, then chemotherapy. In some cases the dimensions or quantity of tumors in the other organs takes away the option of surgery as a treatment.

If chemotherapy and additional drugs are able to lower the quantity and size of these tumors, surgery may at that point turn out to be an option as the second form of treatment. If not, chemotherapy and various drugs (perhaps from clinical trials) might for a time stop or reduce the continued spread of the cancer. With metastasis the person's possibility of surviving the cancer for more than 5 years after diagnosis falls to roughly 8%.

The statistics are clear. The time frame when the colon cancer is diagnosed and treated results in a dramatic difference. If detected and treated early, the person has a high likelihood of surviving the disease. When diagnosis and treatment is delayed, the chances start turning against the person so that once the cancer progresses to the lymph nodes, the probability is nearly even. Further the chances decrease precipitously when the cancer metastasizes.

However, all too often doctors fail to recommend routine cancer screening to their patients. By the time the cancer is ultimately diagnosed - frequently because the tumor has become so large that it is causing blockage, because the patient has unexplained anemia that is worsening, or because the patient begins to notice other symptoms - the cancer has already reached a Stage 3 or even a Stage 4. The patient now faces a much different prognosis than he or she would have if the cancer had been detected early by routine screening.

Attorneys who handle cancer cases often classify this as a "loss of chance" of a better recovery. In other words, since the doctor did not recommend that the patient undergo routine screening test, the cancer is now much more advanced and the patient has a much reduced chance of surviving the cancer. A physician might be liable for malpractice if he or she fails to propose cancer screening to a patient who subsequently is determined to have metastatic colon cancer.

by: Joseph Hernandez

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