It is a well-known fact that the key to becoming a cancer survivor rather than a cancer victim is early diagnosis and treatment. It is the responsibility of the primary care physician to ask appropriate probing questions and take serious any complaints that arise during an examination that might indicate that the patient has an early form of cancer. It is especially important to biopsy any kind of growth or tumor that might be or become cancerous.
The patient’s doctor should also ensure that regular screenings, such as mammograms, prostate cancer screenings, Pap smears, and colonoscopies are performed.
If there is even the slightest suspicion that cancer is a possibility, appropriate scans and a referral to a specialist are required.
How is a cancer diagnosis missed?
- A primary care doctor may fail to recognize signs of cancer
- A doctor may not order appropriate screening tests
- A doctor may not refer you to an expert
- A doctor may misdiagnose the cancer as some other illness
- A radiologist may misinterpret an imaging that shows a mass that turns out to be cancer
- A pathologist may make an error in interpreting tissue samples
Sadly, these medical failures may cause intense suffering and death when early diagnosis and treatment could have stopped the growth of the cancer.
If you or someone you love has an advanced cancer because it was not diagnosed at an earlier stage, you may have a claim against the doctor who negligently failed to recognize it in time. You will need an aggressive and experienced medical malpractice attorney who is accustomed to handling failure to diagnose cancer claims. These cases can be difficult because even if you manage to prove that a doctor negligently failed to diagnose the cancer, the lawyers for the doctor’s malpractice insurance company will argue that the outcome would have been the same regardless of when the diagnosis was made.
Failure to diagnose cancer cases are challenging and expensive. Proving that the failure to diagnose your cancer caused a worse outcome than you would have otherwise had will require the testimony of medical experts to demonstrate that a cancer like yours would have been curable if caught at an earlier time and promptly treated.
The Phoenix, Arizona, medical malpractice attorneys at Wattel and York understand what it takes to prove a failure to diagnose case. We have medical experts available to analyze your records and testify on your behalf if they find that your outcome would have been dramatically improved with a proper and timely diagnosis.
Call us today for a free, no-obligation consultation and case analysis. It costs you nothing to get started, and you will owe us nothing unless we win money for you and your family.
