When Cancer is Misdiagnosed

The key to effectively treating many forms of fast moving cancer is early detection. If a patient goes into a doctor's office complaining of certain symptoms that align with those of certain cancers but the physician sends him or her home with a clean bill of health, it may take weeks or even months for the symptoms to get severe enough for the patient to go back to the doctor. By this point in time it will likely be easy for the doctor to correctly diagnose the cancer, but it may be too late to eradicate it.

Cancer misdiagnosis can completely change the treatment of the disease. A cancer that could have easily been treated and eradicated with radiation or chemotherapy if it had been caught the first time the patient went into the doctor's office, can metastasize and become untreatable by the time it is properly diagnosed.

There are a number of mistakes that doctors and dentists make when it comes to patients with fast moving cancers which can lead to misdiagnosis. Some of these mistakes include:

Signs and symptoms of the cancer which closely mimic another disease lead the doctor to the wrong diagnosis.
A botched biopsy makes detecting the cancer difficult or a biopsy is simply misread.
A malignant tumor is mistakenly identified as benign.
The patient is not referred to a specialist despite doubt on the part of the doctor.
A follow up with the patient to make sure the diagnosis was appropriate does not occur.

Cancer misdiagnosis can easily happen if a doctor feels slightly unsure of his or her diagnosis but fails to go to further lengths to ensure that it is correct.

To find out more about cancer misdiagnosis, visit the website of the St. Petersburg medical malpractice lawyers of Beltz & Ruth, P.A.