Being told one has colon cancer tends to raise fear in nearly all of us. It can thus feel highly reassuring for your physician say that you only have hemorrhoids and there is no need to be concerned about the blood in your stool. But this reassurance ought to not be given until the doctor has eliminated the possibility of colon cancer (and other potentially serious gastrointestinal issues). Otherwise, you may not find out that you have colon cancer until it is too late. Should a doctor conclude without testing assumes that reports of blood in the stool or rectal bleeding by a patient are the result of hemorrhoids and it eventually turns out to be colon cancer, that physician might have committed medical malpractice and the patient may have a legal claim against that physician.
It is generally thought that there are currently at least 10 million men and women with hemorrhoids. An additional million new instances of hemorrhoids will probably occur this year. In comparison, a little more than the 100 thousand new cases of colon cancer that will be detected . In addition, colon cancers do not always. If they do, the bleeding might be non-consistent. Also depending on the location of the cancer in the colon, the blood may not actually be visible in the stool. Perhaps it is simply due to the difference in the quantity of instances being identified that a number of doctors simply suppose that blood in the stool or rectal bleeding is due to hemorrhoids. This is playing the odds. A physician who reaches this conclusion is going to be correct over ninety percent of the time. It sounds realistic, right? The problem, however, is that if the doctor is inaccurate in this diagnosis, the patient might not find out he or she has colon cancer until it has developed to an advanced stage, perhaps even to where it is no longer treatable.
For this reason doctors commonly recommend that a colonoscopy ought to be completed without delay if someone has blood in the stool or rectal bleeding. A colonoscopy is a method whereby a flexible tube with a camera on the end is used to visualize the inside of the colon.
If growths (polyps or tumors) are detected, they can be taken out (if small enough) or sampled and examined for the existence of cancer (by biopsy). Providing no cancer is discovered during the colonoscopy may colon cancer be eliminated as a cause of the blood.
However, should the cancer not be found until it has spread beyond the colon and has reached the lymph nodes, the individual's 5 year survival rate will normally be approximately fifty three percent Aside from surgery to remove the tumor and surrounding portions of the colon treatment for this stage of colon cancer requires chemotherapy in an attempt to remove any cancer that might be left in the body. By the time the cancer spreads to other organs for example the liver, lungs, or brain, the person's 5 year survival rate is cut down to close to eight percent. Now treatment may entail surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and other medications. Treatment may or may not still be effective when the cancer is this advanced. When treatment stops being helpful, colon cancer is fatal. This year, approximately forty eight thousand individuals will die in the U.S. from colon cancer metastasis.
By telling the patient that blood in the stool or rectal bleeding as resulting from hemorrhoids while not doing the correct tests to rule out colon cancer, a doctor puts the patient at risk of not knowing he or she has colon cancer until it progresses to an advanced, possibly no longer treatable, stage. This may amount to a departure from the accepted standard of medical care and might end in a malpractice lawsuit.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting medical malpractice cases. You can learn more about cases involving advanced colon cancer including stage 4 colon cancer by visiting the website
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