A cancer prevented is better than a cancer cured. Your survival from this deadly medical condition boils down to varying factors, but mostly on timely and accurate detection as a preventive measure against the disease’s rapid escalation.
As per recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, cancer is next to heart disease as a leading cause of death in the United States. Of the over 1.6 million cases of cancer reported in 2020, there were approximately 602,350 deaths. The kinds of cancer leading to the highest fatalities were lung, breast and prostate cancers.
Finding out you have cancer may take you to overwhelming emotional stages. But eventually discovering your situation is an unfortunate case of cancer misdiagnosis may be tragic enough for you to file a claim against your doctor and all liable parties.
Causes of cancer misdiagnosis
Before pursuing a claim, you must first prove a doctor-patient relationship exists between you and your physician, which means they have an obligation to provide you with an accurate diagnosis. Then, since your doctor must maintain a professional standard of care, you must establish they failed to uphold these standards, directly resulting in harm and other losses.
As trained as medical professionals may be, detecting which cells are cancerous is extremely challenging, even under a microscope. So, aside from your primary care provider, other individuals with differing levels of expertise could potentially cause cancer misdiagnosis in North Carolina, such as:
- A technician’s inappropriate test administration and recording
- A radiologist’s test result misinterpretation
- A secondary doctor’s inaccurate scan reading or routine screening
- Test result errors due to faulty laboratory equipment
- A primary doctor’s incorrect classification of cancer and its severity, which leads to delayed diagnosis or missing the cancer altogether
It is also possible that your primary doctor failed to conduct thorough checks on your medical history, family patterns and medications before making a conclusion. Operating on limited information is too risky because they must address any likelihood of cancer as soon as possible to prevent it from quickly spreading, and in the worst cases, causing death.
More than one opinion
There is no harm in availing a second opinion. After all, it is your life on the line. Suppose you have enough reason to believe your grave circumstances warrant a medical malpractice lawsuit. In that case, you must urgently seek legal support as you only have three years since your injury to file a claim and recover compensation.