Cancer is not the same disease it was 20 years ago. People are living longer with a cancer diagnosis and have more options regarding treatments. More options, that is, if it is diagnosed early enough.
A delayed cancer diagnosis can mean the difference between a minor surgery to remove a malignant growth and major surgery to remove significantly more tissue, or being forced to undergo chemotherapy or radiation that may not have otherwise been needed. While we all can appreciate the need for physicians to order fewer unnecessary tests, there is no excuse for a physician ignoring symptoms or failing to administer inexpensive, routine tests to detect common cancers.
Common types of cancer include:
Improper treatment can also affect your prognosis for recovering from cancer. Physicians may treat things merely to spare their clinics the cost of referrals or simply to retain medical fees for themselves. Perhaps the treatment your physician prescribed was more aggressive than was needed and caused a weakened immune system that left you open to serious infection. Perhaps the degree of surgical eradication of a tumor left you with serious scarring or disfigurement that cannot be repaired by reconstructive surgery.
If you are facing a long course of treatment or an uncertain prognosis for cancer, and the symptoms existed for a long time but were ignored by your doctor, it may be helpful to have someone from our office review your medical records to see whether the proper steps were taken to evaluate your symptoms and whether the results of any tests performed were properly interpreted. Contact a Pennsylvania Medical Malpractice Lawyer via email or call us at 412-261-2620 today for a free, no-obligation consultation with our experienced medical malpractice trial attorney, Veronica Richards. She is experienced in both medicine and the law. She knows what questions to ask to get the answers you deserve.
