Failure to diagnose cancer

One of the most frequent types of cases seen in medical malpractice is the failure to diagnose cancer.

Some cancers have warning signs such as unusual bleeding or discharge, change in bowel/bladder habits, a thickening or lump in a body part, digestion problems/difficulty swallowing, or a nagging cough/hoarseness, unusual weight loss or weight gain.   Doctors have a responsibility to recognize these early warning signs and order appropriate diagnostic tests to evaluate whether his/her patient may have cancer.

As the ability to diagnose cancer continues to improve, a doctor's failure to diagnose cancer becomes more difficult to understand and accept. A patient's chance of survival is directly linked to how early his cancer is diagnosed; failure to diagnose cancer in an early stage may require the patient to undergo more aggressive and painful cancer treatment than would otherwise be necessary. Certainly, a patient's prognosis worsens when cancer is not diagnosed in the early stages.

The following is a list of the more common types of cancer that doctors often fail to diagnose:

• Cervical cancer
• Colon cancer
• Breast cancer
• Prostate cancer
• Esophageal cancer

Early treatments of all of these types of cancer are far less painful than the later courses of action necessary as a result of failing to diagnose them early. Often times, chemotherapy and radiation can be avoided if cancer is detected early enough. When a doctor fails to diagnose a cancer, the pain and suffering, potential terminal condition and the emotional and  financial hardship of the patient and his/her family increases; this now becomes the physician's responsibility as he/she was the one who missed the early diagnosis.