A Failure to Diagnose
The worry for the patient is that the failure to diagnose cancer at an early stage or at all, means that the effectiveness of the treatments can be less advantageous for the patient, which could result in:
- Pain suffering and injuries that could have been avoided
- Prolonging of the illness, that could have been avoided, and
- Reduced chances of recovery
When cancer misdiagnosis has taken place, or the diagnosis has been delayed, the patient may be entitled to pursue a claim for medical negligence or malpractice.
Causes
Misdiagnosis of cancer can occur for a number of reasons, for example:
- False positive or false negative results from a faulty cancer screening
- MRI or CT scans fail to identify cancerous lesions if the lesions are too small to detect.
- Lab errors
- Human error/incompetence of a medical practitioner who fails to recognise the signs of cancer or misinterpret cancer as another illness.
Types
Cancer medical negligence claims have been associated with many types of cancer, such as:
- Bladder
- Breast
- Colon and Rectal
- Endometrial
- Kidney
- Leukaemia
- Liver
- Lung
- Lymphoma
- Pancreatic
- Skin
- Stomach
- Thyroid
- Uterine
Misdiagnosis Categories
Medical negligence claims for misdiagnosis of cancer compensation can be grouped into the following categories:
Incorrect Cancer Diagnosis (Misdiagnosis of Cancer)
False diagnosis of cancer (liver cancer misdiagnosis) occurs when the doctor gives a cancer diagnosis to a patient without cancer. In this case, a non cancer patient will undergo unnecessary cancer treatment.
Another instance of cancer misdiagnosis is when a doctor misdiagnoses cancer for another illness and the cancer patient does not undergo the relevant treatment or misses their window of opportunity for cancer treatment.
Failure to Diagnose Cancer
In this case, a medical practitioner completely fails to notice the signs of cancer and completely fails to diagnose the patient’s cancer. This can lead to fatalities as the patient may not be diagnosed until the symptoms reach their peak when it may be too late to treat cancer.
Delayed Diagnosis of Cancer
Delayed cancer diagnosis claims of cancer occur when medical professionals fail to detect the patient’s cancer at the early stages. When a diagnosis of cancer is delayed, so is the treatment. This can lead to complications in the future or in aggressive cancer patients can lead to their untimely death. It is possible to claim compensation for delayed cancer diagnosis.