Cancer Misdiagnosis Claims

Cancer misdiagnosis evidently occurs when there is a failure to identify the presence of the disease.

We have seen matters where patients repeatedly present to hospitals with the same symptoms and the same tests elected for which disclose negative results with then a separate diagnostic test is elected for in the same hospital or another hospital and a positive occurence in terms of disease presence is established. This can be found then at the latter stage 4 stages which is problematic.

With the advent of MRI and PET scans and other screening tools, the onset of most types of cancer can be detected more readily than before.

The earlier the cancer diagnosis, the more effective the treatment can be, and this can lead to much more positive outcomes for the patient.

However, where the cancer diagnosis is delayed or perhaps not even accurate in the first place, then a patient’s recovery could be seriously jeopardised or indeed his life put at risk.

If a person has been misdiagnosed for cancer, he/she will in all likelihood be entitled to bring proceedings for a cancer diagnosis claim.

What exactly is this type of Claim?

It is a claim essentially for medical negligence where:

1.  Cancer is not diagnosed or treated appropriately even where the patient has indeed got symptoms.
2. Benign growths or symptoms are misdiagnosed as cancer and managed as cancer, in error.
3. The cancer diagnosis is delayed for no good reason.
4. laboratory or other tests for cancer are misdiagnosed.

To succeed in such a claim, the delay or misdiagnosis must result from a negligent act on the part of your doctor or hospital.

A misdiagnosis could mean a patient gets delayed treatment or even the wrong treatment, resulting in the patient undergoing intense treatment with side-effects that could have been avoided. In some cases, it also means interventions are too late and the patient could lose his life frankly.

Instances of misdiagnosis can occur within the general range of cancer cases but particularly in cervical, leukaemia, pancreas, and skin cancer.

The main types of misdiagnoses:

1. Delayed diagnosis.
   
    This can undermine the patient’s chances of survival. A doctor could fail to send his patient for cancer screening or where laboratory results are misread. All these examples show how the Doctor or clinic failed in their duty of care to the patient.

• Failure to diagnose.

 If for example, your doctor interprets your symptoms not as cancer, but as some other disorder of no great importance. This may be due to lack of experience, or the appropriate test was not conducted.

• Incorrect diagnosis

 A patient could be given chemotherapy treatment when they did not even have cancer. The side effects here are well known and quite severe.

Any person who has a cancer misdiagnosis has had enough to deal with – with the cancer but a misdiagnosis puts an added quite serve stress consequence, in addition to a cancer treatment issues.

What are the relevant time limits?

You have two years to institute court action starting on the day of your diagnosis. This is a strict time limit except where you only discovered at a later date the wrong (misdiagnosis) committed. In that particular case, the two-year rule will then start running from the date you discovered the wrong, otherwise known as the date of knowledge and not the date of the misdiagnosis.