Failure to Diagnose Cancer
A failure to diagnose cancer can have extremely detrimental — even deadly — consequences. Unfortunately, the failure to diagnose cancer is one of the most common types of medical malpractice. Attorney Brett H. Oppenheimer has successfully represented many individuals and families impacted in ‘failure to diagnose cancer’ cases and similar medical calamities.
Fatal or Severely Adverse Results
The result of a failure to diagnose cancer (in a timely and correct manner) may be:
- no treatment is initiated, or
- the wrong treatment is administered, or
- treatment is started too late to be truly beneficial, or
- the patient does not have cancer or any other medical problem, but is treated
Thousands of patients who could have survived their cancer have died due to a diagnosis failure, and an equal or greater number have suffered through treatment, illness and decreased quality of life due to failures to correctly diagnose their cancer or other medical problem.
Cancers That Could Have Been Prevented or Treated Successfully
Sometimes it’s a patient’s primary care physician who doesn’t see (or sees and dismisses) the “red flag” that cancer symptoms and signs present. In other cases, a doctor doesn’t order the necessary tests — or a health insurance company declines to pay for necessary tests or follow-up.
For some patients, a laboratory technician fails to identify his or her cancer, and in yet other cases, a physician does not interpret test results or imaging correctly. These are the most common ways that a failure to diagnose cancer occurs, but they are not the only mistakes or negligence committed in this field.
Common Types of Cancer Misdiagnosed
There are more than 150 distinct types of cancer. Some of the more common types of cancer involved in failures to diagnose include:
- breast
- cervical
- colon
- lung
- ovarian
- prostate
- renal
- testicular
Contact the Law Office of Brett H. Oppenheimer, PLLC
Brett Oppenheimer has been helping the victims of medical malpractice since 1991. Schedule a private, no-commitment consultation to discuss your circumstances with him today.
