Being told one has colon cancer tends to bring up fear in the majority of people. It can therefore feel very reassuring for your doctor say that you only have hemorrhoids and there is no need to be anxious about the blood in your stool. Yet this reassurance should only come after the physician has ruled out the chance of colon cancer (and other possibly serious gastrointestinal problems). Otherwise, you may not find out that you have colon cancer until it is too late. Should a doctor conclude without testing assumes that claims of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding by a patient are from hemorrhoids and it subsequently turns out to be colon cancer, that physician may not have met the standard of care. Under those circumstances, the patient may have a legal claim against that physician.
It is generally thought that there are over 10 million men and women with hemorrhoids. An additional 1,000,000 new incidents of hemorrhoids will likely occur this year as opposed to a little more than the 100 thousand new incidents of colon cancer that will be detected this year. In addition, not all colon cancers bleed. When they do, the bleeding might be intermittent. Also subject to where the cancer is in the colon, the blood might not actually be visible in the stool. Maybe it is in part as a result of the difference in the quantity of instances being detected that some physicians merely consider that the existence of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding is due to hemorrhoids. This amounts to playing the odds. A physician making this diagnosis is going to be correct more than ninety percent of the time. It appears realistic, right? The difficulty, though, is that if the doctor is wrong in this diagnosis, the patient may not discover he or she has colon cancer before it has developed to a late stage, possibly to where it is no longer treatable.
In the event colon cancer is detected while still contained within the colon, the individual's chances of surviving the cancer are above eighty percent. The five year survival rate is a statistical gauge of the percentage of individuals who survive the disease for a minimum of five years subsequent to diagnosis. Treatment for early stage colon cancer generally calls for only surgery so as to take out the tumor and adjacent portions of the colon. Subject to variables including the stage of the cancer and the individual's medical history (including family medical history), age, and the patient's physical condition, chemotherapy may or may not be recommended.
This is why physicians commonly recommend that a colonoscopy should be ordered without delay if someone has blood in the stool or rectal bleeding. A colonoscopy is a method that uses a flexible tube with a camera on the end is employed to visualize the inside of the colon. If growths (polyps or tumors) are found, they can be extracted (if small enough) or sampled and tested for the existence of cancer (by biopsy). Providing no cancer is found from the colonoscopy can colon cancer be eliminated as a cause of the blood.
But, should the cancer not be found until it has spread past the colon and has reached the lymph nodes, the person's five year survival rate will normally be around fifty three percent In addition to surgery to remove the tumor and adjacent portions of the colon treatment for this stage of colon cancer requires chemotherapy in an effort to get rid of any cancer that may be left in the body. If the cancer spreads to distant organs for example the liver, lungs, or brain, the individual's 5 year survival rate is reduced to roughly 8%. If treatment options exist for a patient at this point, they might include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and other medications. Treatment may or may not still be effective when the cancer is this advanced. If treatment ceases to be effective, colon cancer is fatal. This year, roughly forty eight thousand people will pass away in the U.S. from advanced colon cancer.
As a result of telling the patient that blood in the stool or rectal bleeding as caused by hemorrhoids while not performing the proper tests to eliminate the possibility of colon cancer, a doctor places the patient at risk of not learning that the patient colon cancer before it reaches an advanced, possibly untreatable, stage. This might constitute a departure from the accepted standard of medical care and may result in a medical malpractice case.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an attorney accepting cancer malpractice cases, including Medical Malpractice cases. Visit the website to learn more about cases involving advanced colon cancer and how a cancer lawyer may be able to assist you.
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