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Failure to Diagnose Cancer

Medical Malpractice Attorneys Serving Patients in Ocala

When you go to a doctor, you expect that they will accurately assess your symptoms and carefully diagnose you. However, doctors may make mistakes that result in their failing to diagnose cancer. Cancer tends to be more treatable in its early stages, so a failure to diagnose cancer, particularly lung, breast, or colon cancer, makes it more likely that a patient will not survive. Also, patients with cancer in advanced stages may require particularly aggressive and painful treatments that are expensive. If you are concerned about your doctor's potential failure to diagnose cancer, you should consult an experienced Ocala medical malpractice lawyer at the Dean Law Firm to determine whether you may have a case.

Seeking Compensation for a Failure to Diagnose Cancer

Your odds are better if cancer is detected early and treated promptly. However, in many cases, doctors fail to diagnose cancer in a timely fashion, misdiagnose it, or delay in diagnosing it. Any of these situations may make it less likely that a patient will survive. The result may be a tremendous amount of pain and suffering, both for the patient and for their family.

Cancer is most often detected during routine physical examinations. Doctors are not supposed to ignore signs such as abnormal lesions and unexplained weight loss and fatigue. They are supposed to follow up with the right testing, including a comprehensive physical examination, mammogram, and biopsy. At any stage, however, a doctor might fail to consider the possibility of cancer or rule cancer out inappropriately. We can look at many different factors when determining whether a doctor was negligent in failing to catch signs of cancer or delaying a diagnosis.

Your doctor owes you a legal duty of care to act in the same manner that a reasonably competent physician who practices the same type of medicine would. If a reasonably competent physician likely would make the connection between your symptoms and cancer, but your doctor failed to do so, there may have been medical malpractice. In addition to establishing the standard of care, we would also need to show that the failure to diagnose you caused or worsened your harm, such as by causing you to develop a more serious cancer or condition.

Causation may be challenging to establish. The doctor may argue that even if they had caught the cancer and treated it, it would have progressed toward the same harm. It also will be important to show that you provided the doctor with all of the relevant information so that they could make a diagnosis.

If you succeed in your claim, you probably will be entitled to recover compensation. Among other things, you may be able to recover medical expenses for treatment and drugs that were required due to the failure to diagnose. You may also be able to recover noneconomic damages like pain and suffering and mental anguish.

Discuss Your Medical Malpractice Claim with an Ocala Lawyer

At the Dean Law Firm, we provide legal representation to patients who have been injured due to a doctor's failure to diagnose cancer. Our Ocala medical malpractice attorneys also handle wrongful death claims on behalf of families who have lost a loved one due to a failure to diagnose cancer. Call us at 352-387-8700 or contact us via our online form to set up a free appointment with a misdiagnosis lawyer. We also represent patients and their families in Crystal River, The Villages, and other areas of Marion, Sumter, Lake, Citrus, and Levy Counties.