Misdiagnosed Colon Cancer: What to Do

Colon Cancer Misdiagnosis? Do This NOW

(AscendHealthy.com) – When heading over to a clinic or hospital for testing, it’s always human to expect the best out of a situation. However, the immense anguish you experience when coming out with a diagnosis of cancer can be severely crippling. The mere mention of cancer is enough to send anyone spiraling out of their minds. Yet, what happens when you discover you have been misdiagnosed with colon cancer?

While it’s not uncommon to come across cases of colon cancer misdiagnosis, that doesn’t mean it’s a normal occurrence. If anything, it points to significant lifestyle changes, expensive medical treatments, and more. Here’s what you need to know to take action.

What Can Lead to A False Diagnosis?

Colon cancer, also known as colorectal cancer, can share a good number of symptoms with other digestive conditions. As such, three scenarios can lead your medical practitioner to diagnose you with colorectal cancer. They are;

Misdiagnosis: This is when the symptoms you are experiencing are mistaken for cancer or some other disorder or disease you have.
Delayed diagnosis: If a medical practitioner fails to make the correct diagnosis in time, it could rob you of precious time and opportunity to fight the disease should it turn out to be cancer.
Failure to perform any diagnosis: Misdiagnosis means not knowing what problem you’re actually trying to treat.

Medical professionals will mostly use the symptoms you are undergoing to perform a diagnosis. For colorectal cancer, however, the signs could also indicate other conditions including:

Ulcerative colitis
Crohn’s Disease
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Hemorrhoids
Diverticulitis
Polyps

To truly determine whether you are currently having symptoms as a result of colon cancer, medical diagnostic tests are absolutely necessary to rule out the other conditions. Early and accurate diagnosis can give you a fighting chance.

How Does This Impact Treatment?

While misdiagnosis is not exactly rare, it usually has a great impact on treatment and management options. This is especially true for people under 45 years, since annual screening is highly recommended for people over the age of 50.

The immediate effect misdiagnosis has on treatment is time. In case of a subsequent diagnosis of colon cancer, catching it early implies having multiple treatment options available to you. As the disease advances, these choices keep decreasing, which means an increase in the mortality rate.

It’s essential to intercept it early enough, as chances of survival stand at over 91% for stage 1 patients. Its progress to stage 4 will see the survival rate drop to 11%.

While the focus is on living, one crucial factor for cancer patients is the cost of care. Note that with early diagnosis comes cheaper treatment alternatives. Progression of the illness into late stages implies the treatment costs shoot to almost triple. This increased cost places a significant strain on patients and their support systems.

What Help Should You Seek?

Misdiagnosis can literally mean the difference between life and death, or a pitiful quality of life. In such a case, there are a few options are available to you, should you deem them necessary. The most obvious is to seek an opinion from various medical practitioners. Doing so can save you time, money, as well as mental and emotional anguish when dealing with your disease’s symptoms. It could also signify expeditious intervention and treatment to a satisfactory conclusion.

Another option is to retain the services of a medical malpractice lawyer. Cancer treatment options are not cheap, particularly as the condition advances. You may have trusted a professional to give you the best medical care, but they did not rise to the standard. If this is something you’ve encountered, or are currently going through, you have the power in your hands to take the appropriate action and seek appropriate compensation.