Is Doctor Liable For Malpractice For Not Acting According To Colon Cancer Screening Recommendations
Colon cancer is the second leading cause of deaths resulting from cancer. Every year, around 48,000 men and women will pass away because of colon cancer. A large number of these fatalities might be prevented with early detection and treatment by standard colon cancer screening before symtoms develop.
When the cancer is located as a small polyp while undergoing a routine screening test, such as a colonoscopy, the polyp can ordinarily be removed during the colonoscopy without the need for the surgical removal of any segment of the colon. Once the polyp grows to the point where it turns cancerous and gets to Stage I or Stage II, the tumor and a portion of the colon on each side of the tumore is surgical taken out. The chances that the individual will survive the cancer is over 90% for Stage 1 and seventy three percent for Stage II.
If the cancer reaches Stage 3, surgery is not enough and the person also needs to undergo chemotherapy. At this stage the chances that the patient will outlive the cancer by at least five years falls to fifty three percent, depending on such variables as how many lymph nodes that contain cancer.
Once the colon cancer gets to the fourth Stage, treatment might require undergoing chemotherapy and perhaps different drugs as well as surgery on other organs. If the size and quantity of tumors in different organs (like the liver and lungs) are sufficiently few, surgery on these organs may be the first treatment, then chemotherapy. In some cases the size or number of tumors in the other organs takes away the choice of surgery as a treatment.
If chemotherapy and other drugs are able to lower the quantity and size of these tumors, surgery might then turn out to be a viable follow up treatment. Otherwise, chemotherapy and different drugs (possibly through clinical trials) might for a time stop or reduce the ongoing spread of the cancer. The relative 5-year survival rate drops to around eight percent.
The statistics are clear. The time frame in which the cancer is diagnosed and treated results in a significant difference. If diagnosed and treated early, the person has an excellent chance of outliving the disease. As detection and treatment is delayed, the odds begin shifting against the person so that by the time the cancer gets to the lymph nodes, the percentage is almost even. Plus the odds fall greatly once the colon cancer reaches Stage IV.
However, too frequently physicians do not suggest routine cancer testing to their patients. When the cancer is ultimately discovered - many times since the tumor has become so large that it is leading to blockage, since the person is losing blood internally and that condition is worsening, or since the individual begins to notice other symptoms - the cancer is a Stage 3 or even a Stage 4. The patient now confronts a much different prognosis than he or she would have if the cancer had been discovered early through routine screening tests.
In medical malpractice terms, the patient has sustained a