Malpractice Cases Due To The Delayed Diagnosis Of Colon Cancer
Just the idea that one might have colon cancer tends to bring up worry in the majority of us. It can thus feel highly reassuring to hear your physician tell you that you just have hemorrhoids. That there is no need to worry about the blood in your stool. Yet this reassurance ought to not be given until the doctor has ruled out the chance of colon cancer (and other possibly dangerous gastrointestinal issues). Else, you may not learn that you have colon cancer until it is too late. Should a doctor decide without testing assumes that claims of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding by a patient are the result of hemorrhoids and it later turns out to be colon cancer, that doctor may have committed medical malpractice. Under those circumstances, the patient may be able to pursue a lawsuit against that physician.
In excess of 10 million men and women have hemorrhoids and another 1,000,000 new cases of hemorrhoids will likely arise this year. In comparison, a little more than the 100 thousand new cases of colon cancer that will be diagnosed this year. Further, not all colon cancers bleed. If they do, the bleeding could be non-consistent. And subject to where the cancer is in the colon, the blood may not actually be apparent in the stool. Possibly it is simply due to the difference in the volume of cases being diagnosed that some doctors merely think that blood in the stool or rectal bleeding is due to hemorrhoids. This is gambling, pure and simple. A physician who reaches this conclusion is going to be right more than ninety percent of the time. It appears reasonable, right? The problem, though, is that if the doctor is wrong in this diagnosis, the patient may not find out 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 physicians frequently recommend that a colonoscopy should be done immediately if someone has blood in the stool or rectal bleeding. A colonoscopy is a procedure whereby a flexible scope with a camera on the end is used to examine the interior of the colon. In the event that something is detected during the procedure, it may be possible to remove it right away should it not be very big. In any case, it will be biopsied to check for cancer. Colon cancer may properly be eliminated as the reason for the blood providing that a colonoscopy locates no cancer
But, if the cancer is diagnosed after it has spread outside of the colon into the lymph nodes, the patient