As a patient, when medical attention is sought, it is imperative that a timely diagnosis for symptoms be made so the appropriate treatment can begin. This is especially true for the diagnosis of cancer as a delay in any diagnosis may affect a patients treatment options. In most cases, when cancer is detected early on, prognosis has a better outcome, whereas, contrarily, if not properly diagnosed early enough, the cancer can progress making a patient's prognosis worse. Yet, when it comes to cancer patients, failure to diagnose cancer has lead to more cases of medical malpractice than any other type of case involving medical malpractice.Cancer is a group of diseases where cells can become abnormal by aggressively growing and dividing beyond normal limits, invasive to the point of invading and destroying adjacent tissues, and can even be metastatic, which is the spread to other areas within the body. Should these cells proceed to divide more than new cells may be needed, then this can lead to a mass of tissue being formed causing a tumor.
Once a tumor forms, it can either be non-cancerous, or benign, or the tumor can be cancerous, or malignant. As cancer cells are capable of invading nearby tissues, the cells can also travel through the bloodstream spreading the cancer by forming additional tumors in other places in the body. Therefore, the earlier the detection of cancer is made, the greater the probability to stop the spread of cancer to throughout the body.
With cancer affecting people of all ages, causing about thirteen percent of all deaths, and according to the American Cancer Society, 7.6 million people throughout the world died from cancer in 2007, it has become one of the leading causes of death. This is another prime example of why there should be necessary steps taking to be properly diagnosed through early detection screening. To date, there have been great strides made in the early stage cancer screenings or the pre-cancer time. With many screening tools becoming accepted standards among the medical community to test and help reduce the incident that may lead to any failure to diagnose cancer, there is really no excusable reason for a patient to not be screened and have cancer diagnosed in the early stages to prevent a prognosis from becoming worse. A few examples of these screening methods would include mammograms and manual breast examinations to detect breast cancer, PAP smears for cervical cancer detection, or chest X-rays for any detection of lung cancer. Any failure to perform or not perform these or other test in a timely manner, especially if there is a family or individual medical history, may end in the result of medical negligence or malpractice.
Additionally, another cause for failure to diagnose cancer, besides the failure to test, would be a healthcare provider's misinterpretation of the results of test that are performed or the test not being administered properly. As some test, particularly mammograms, can be misread, and therefore, misinterpreted by the radiologist, this can lead to the failure of diagnosis will lead to the spread of the cancer and decrease the patient's treatment options once the cancer is detected. A patient's chance for surviving cancer is directly related to the doctor's ability to diagnose the cancer in a timely manner. With the capabilities of a detection of cancer continually improving, a doctor failing to diagnose cancer is not only difficult to understand and very unacceptable in most cases. Without cancer being diagnosed in the early stages, some patients will be forced to undergo more aggressive and painful treatments that may have been previously unnecessary.
There are many experts in the various medical fields that can determine if there may have been a failure to diagnose due to testing being done in a timely manner, and if a delay in the diagnosis that may have caused a significant change in the patient's treatment options, prognosis, and survivability. To find out if this may be a related situation, click here and request a free consultation.
