Getting the diagnosis that you have cancer can be a frightening experience, but it can be even worse if your doctor fails to find it and diagnose it. If your doctor failed you in providing the right diagnosis, or if the diagnosis was delayed, you might be able to sue this doctor for this problem. This type of case falls into medical malpractice, which is a part of personal injury law.
How This Happens
Diagnosing cancer can sometimes be a tricky thing because it lacks symptoms in many cases. It can also be tricky because the symptoms and findings can often resemble other conditions. If a doctor looks at all the evidence and tests you have completed, he or she might diagnose the condition wrong, leaving you with undiagnosed cancer.
Not only does this create problems because you will not be receiving cancer treatment, but you might be receiving treatment types that you really do not need.
Why Early Diagnosis Matters
According to the World Health Organization, early diagnosis is vital for most types of cancer. When cancer is discovered at an early stage, there are more options for treating it, and a person's chances of survival greatly increase.
For certain types of cancer, diagnosing it can be very simple. An example of this is skin cancer. If a person sees a strange spot on his skin, he can have it tested and finding out it is cancer should not be difficult. If this person goes to the doctor and the doctor examines it, the doctor should know what types of tests to complete to find out.
The doctor might go ahead and order the tests to be safe, or the doctor might look at the mark and conclude that it is just a skin allergy, or something similar. If this happens, the skin cancer could go undiagnosed, and the person could be at a very high risk for losing the battle to cancer.
Cancer cells can spread very easily if left in the body. With the right treatment though, the cancer cells can die, which will stop them from spreading throughout other parts of the body. This is why early detection of cancer is so vital.
What You Can Do
If this has happened to you and you are suffering the consequences of it, you may want to look for a medical malpractice lawyer to look into your case. Medical malpractice lawyers accept many types of cases, and each case usually falls into one of these categories:
- Mistake made during a procedure
- Delayed diagnosis
- Failure to diagnose a condition
- Wrongful death due to a mistake or negligence
When you visit a lawyer, you will need to thoroughly explain your case and present the evidence you have. The lawyer will need to be able to prove that the doctor failed to diagnose the cancer, and that the doctor should have been able to with the evidence and test results that he or she had.
If your lawyer can prove this to the court, you may be able to win the case. One of the hard parts of cases like this is coming up with a settlement amount to ask for, because it's very hard to put a dollar amount on your health and life.
Doctors have a responsibility to their patients, and performing the right tests on a person can help a doctor find out what type of problem a person is having.
If you are ready to learn more about your case and what you are entitled to, make an appointment with a personal injury lawyer from a firm like Arrington Schelin & Munsey PC that specializes in medical malpractice.
