Individuals with a family history of colon cancer and people who have symptoms are at higher risk of being diagnosed with colon cancer. When someone both has a family history and also has complaints of symptoms such as rectal bleeding, doctors generally agree that a colonoscopy is necessary in order to determine whether the person has colon cancer or rule it out.

But in order to be reliable a colonoscopy must be complete. It must cover the entire length of the colon. When obstructions or poor preparation yield incomplete visualization of areas of the colon the colonoscopy must be repeated or an alternative, such as a virtual colonoscopy, must be considered. A failure to do so could lead to a missed tumor which can grow and progress to an advanced stage before it is detected.

This is what happened in one reported case involving a fifty-four year old female who passed away from advanced colon cancer. Consider her medical history. She had a family history of colon cancer. She had 3 colonoscopies over 6 years. During that period, she reported that she experienced rectal bleeding and abdominal pain many times. At least once her blood work also showed that she was anemic. All three are potential symptoms of colon cancer.

The notes from two of the colonoscopies showed that there was incomplete visualization of the ascending colon and cecum as the scope could not be passed beyond the transverse colon. Nonetheless, the doctor who performed the 3 colonoscopies and followed her during this time kept telling her that her symptoms were due to hemorrhoids.

The woman was finally diagnosed with colon cancer when her tumor was discovered as she was undergoing exploratory surgery in order to determine the cause of her symptoms. A large portion of her intestines were removed due to the cancer. She was further treated with chemotherapy. She eventually died from the cancer. As a result of the doctor’s failure to follow up on her symptoms in light of two incomplete colonoscopies the woman’s surviving family filed a lawsuit. The law firm that represented the family in this matter was able to report that they recovered $875,000 on behalf of the family.

Doctors use diagnostic tests in order to find or rule out certain diseases. For example, the colonoscopy is used to find or rule out colon cancer. But the result of the test is only as good as the accuracy with which the test was performed. A colonoscopy uses a scope to visualize the inside of the colon in order to determine whether there are any polyps or tumors in the colon.

If the entire colon is not visualized, as in the case above, a doctor cannot rely on it to rule out cancer. That makes about as much sense as only listening to one of your lungs, examining only one of your eyes, or ordering only part of a complete blood count. When the patient does have cancer this could lead to a delay in diagnosis that allows the cancer time to grow and advance to an uncurable stage due to the delay in diagnosis. Under such circumstances the doctor who relied on such a partial result may be liable under a medical malpractice or even wrongful death claim.

Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting medical malpractice cases and wrongful death cases. You can learn more about cases involving advanced colon cancer at his website: http://www.colon-cancer-law.com/advanced-colon-cancer.shtml

The pharmaceutical industry is facing a coarse couple of years. The ‘patent-expiration cliff’ slated for 2012-2013, in which lucrative brand-name drugs will lose exclusiveness and face less expensive generics. To offset the losses they are expecting, many pharmaceuticals attempting to find profits have turned to oncology and creating cancer drugs.

This will sound like excellent news. But current motivations and market conditions may actually work to the detriment of pharmaceuticals and patients alike. Today, with cancer the following promising revenue source, a really well known New York-based chemical company employs one thousand analysts developing cancer treatments, spends 20 percent of its $7-billion-plus research and development budget on cancer, and has roughly twenty-two cancer drugs in controlled trials.

Pharmaceutical companies are pouring billions of greenbacks into developing cancer drugs. Latest systematic discoveries allowing for new targets in cancer research have generated about 860 drugs in trials — much more than for any other infirmities, including heart problems and stroke. Some critics call the excess a ‘cancer bubble.’

Still, with hundreds of new potentials and billions of greenbacks poured into cancer research, a cure should be approaching, right? Unfortunately, few drugs have made it to the market — only one this year. And many of those drugs aren’t revolutionary treatments, but medicines that extend life by days or months — or, in some cases, that simply stabilize the patient, and at a very high cost.

One difficulty is that while these drug firms can choose from many targets to attack, they cannot define which would be most beneficial. Even when one anomaly is targeted successfully, the carcinoma usually creates other anomalies, and permutations and complications so enormous that finding the right combo for a given patient’s physiology is almost impossible.

Then there’s the issue of financial interest. Insurance corporations and regimes tend to shell out the sums needed for cancer care with relative ease, so drug corporations find they can charge high costs for drugs that barely work, on the off-chance a given drug might save a life.
Are drug companies actually attempting to find a cure? Or are they just satisfied with developing less dramatic treatments that fill their coffers? They may not have the inducement required to develop cures or hugely improved treatments, when they can make enough money creating stopgap drugs.

Naturally, pharma executives reject such a cold-hearted conclusion. They’d gladly make better drugs that would offer bigger gains, they say. But this is likely tempered by the companies’ and shareholders’ wants.

The prevailing ‘cancer bubble,’ with so many rivals, so many drugs, and not enough room in the marketplace for all, begs the issue of whether today’s big investments in cancer drugs will ever bear fruit, or if some companies and their investors will get burned. One popular drug company aims for $11 bill in cancer-drug sales by 2018, more than quadrupling last year’s sales in the whole category.

Joni Bell has many years of extensive study in the area of natural cancer prevention and treatment. He has numerous success stories of people being diagnosed living cancer free with use of alternative methods. http://apricotpower-info.com/

People generally rely on a doctor communicating any important test results or recommendations to us, even if circumstances prevent us from going back to that doctor. Indeed, when an early diagnosis of a disease or condition could literally mean the difference between life and death it is critical that the patient be informed. When the patient is made aware of each doctor’s conclusions and the rationale behind those conclusions then at least the patient can make an informed decision based on his or her level of risk tolerance. It becomes more complicated, however, when the one doctor who is on the right track ends up not communicating his or her suspicions and the other doctors are not ordering the right tests.

One such situation arose in the following case: Several doctors had an opportunity to diagnose their male patient’s prostate cancer while it was in its early stages. The patient first saw his primary care physician, a general practitioner, with urinary problems when he was 56 years old. The general practitioner concluded that the problems were not related to cancer although no testing was done to rule out cancer. Ten months later the patient consulted with a urologist who performed a digital examination on the prostate gland and ordered a PSA blood test. As it turned out this urologist was not an approved provider under the patient’s insurance and so the patient consulted with a second urologist.

Although the blood test results came in neither the results of the test nor the first urologist’s suspicion of cancer and recommendation that a biopsy be conducted were communicated to the patient’s primary care physician or to his second urologist. The second urologist concluded that the examination of the prostate was normal and that there was no evidence of cancer.

As such the cancer went undiagnosed for two years at which time it had spread beyond the prostate. The physicians treating the patient’s cancer concluded that he likely had only one to five years to life as a result of the cancer’s spread. The law firm that handled this matter reported that they were able to achieve a settlement during jury selection at trial in the amount of $2.5 million on behalf of the patient.

In addition, the family doctor did not conduct a physical examination of the prostate to determine if there was anything about the gland that would indicate the presence of cancer. And while the urologist approved by the insurance company did a physical examination, that urologist failed to detect anything. Yet, neither the family doctor nor the approved urologist ordered a PSA blood test. The one physician who did order a PSA blood test recommended a biopsy. This appears to have been the critical test that could have raised the suspicion of cancer and, with a biopsy, resulted in an early stage diagnosis.

As the case discussed above shows, having more than one physician can lead to multiple errors. The first error consisted of not following the screening guidelines. This was a mistake committed by both the general practitioner as well as the second urologist. The other error was one in communication. This happened when there was a miscommunication of the findings, suspicions, and recommendations of the urologist unapproved by the insurance company and the other physicians.

If the patient had been able to keep seeing the unapproved urologist the patient would have known that cancer was a possibility and that a follow up biopsy was in order. Whether the other physicians would have agreed with that recommendation or would have passed this information to the patient if they had received it is unknown but then the error would have been entirely theirs.

As occurred in the case discussed above, errors such as these can delay the diagnosis of the patient’s cancer. The difficulty with cancer is that a delay in diagnosis can, as it did in the case, allow the cancer time to grow and to spread, so that by the time the cancer is finally diagnosed it is too late for a cure. These types of errors can lead to a medical malpractice claim. The case above was settled and most settlements are reached without any admission of wrongdoing or of liability on the part of defendants. It is not surprising, however, that the case settled for $2.5 million.

Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney focused on catastrophic injury and medical malpractice cases. To learn more about prostate cancer cases visit his website at http://www.prostatecancerlaw.com/advanced-prostate-cancer.shtml

Statistically less than one percent of those diagnosed with colon cancer are under the age of thirty-five. Yet, given the deadly nature of the disease doctors generally agree that the presence of rectal bleeding, even in someone under thirty-five, needs to be followed by a colonoscopy in order to determine whether the bleeding is due to a tumor or some other reason. Simply assuming that the blood is the result of hemorrhoids falls below the standard of care.

Consider what happened in a reported case involving a woman who complained to her family doctor that she noticed blood in her stool and experienced pain when she had bowel movements. The woman was only twenty four years old. The doctor, without even performing an examination, prescribed a laxative after diagnosing her with diarrhea and other bowel problems. She went back after 4 months with complaints of constipation, pain and problems sitting. This time the doctor finally examined her but told her she had hemorrhoids. His treatment: an enema. She saw that doctor two more times and each time was reassured that she merely had hemorrhoids and had nothing to worry about.

The woman had to be rushed to an emergency room complaining of severe pain 7 months after her initial visit to the family doctor. They scheduled a colonoscopy at which time she was diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer. She underwent surgery (which due to the advanced nature of the cancer included not only removal of part of her colon but also of her uterus and part of the lower intestines). This was followed by chemotherapy. She eventually had a recurrence and died of the disease less than three years later. She was survived by her husband and daughter, a minor.

The law firm that handled this case reported that the case went to trail and the jury returned a verdict of $1.5 million. The award included the maximum of $350,000 allowed under the law of the state where the doctor practices for pain and suffering. The remainder of the award was for future lost wages.

This case is just one example of what is perhaps the most common medical error concerning the diagnosis of colon cancer. Far too often doctors do not perform order a colonoscopy or refer the patient to a gastroenterologist when a patient complains of rectal bleeding or blood in the stool. Instead, these doctors simply assume that the symptoms are the result of hemorrhoids. This is especially common when the patient is under fifty years old.

When this happens and the patient dies because the cancer spread to the point of not being curable due to the delay in diagnosis the surviving family may be able to bring a claim against the doctor responsible for the delay.

Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting medical malpractice cases and wrongful death cases. You can learn more about cases involving advanced colon cancer at his website: http://www.colon-cancer-law.com/advanced-colon-cancer.shtml

Chemo Wigs are used by patients undergoing chemical therapies as a part of their cancer treatment. They form an important part of a full recovery for such people, who typically experience hair loss as a side effect of treatment. Like others on the market, Chemo Wigs are made from either human hair or synthetic fibers. Human hair wigs are usually much preferred over synthetic ones so they are almost always much more expensive. They can also be cut and styled in any way, with some people claiming they can actually feel the difference between real hair and man-made hair. Human Hair Wigs tend to be sourced from Asia or Eastern Europe. Hair from Asia is quite often Chinese, Korean, or Indian, and can undergo treatment for color and texture. That from Europe tends to originate in the eastern half of the continent and do not generally need such processing. They are often known as “virgin” or “all-natural” hair.

Cancer is one of the cruelest diseases because it is so inexplicable. Chemo Wigs tend to the psychological aspects of chemical therapy, the only treatment offering any hope to those diagnosed with the later stages of cancer. But the loss of hair almost completely alters one’s appearance at a time when one’s self-identity may be under question, so even a small matter like hair can have deep and far-reaching effects. Some other things one may do for oneself in that regard is to protect the scalp and any remaining hair. Since the baldness that comes with chemotherapy should be temporary, it is probably important to take extra special care of the natural hair that might still remain, using a soft brush and the smoothest pillowcases, which are less likely to catch hair during sleep.

Cancer treatment is very costly, but Chemo Wigs may be covered by health insurance, depending on the precise terms of the policy. These human hair wigs help people, particularly women, deal with the trauma and stigma of hair loss. There are also non-profit organizations that will lend wigs out to qualifying applicants for free. And many companies offer special pricing with a doctor’s notice. But whatever the source, the use of wigs to help promote self-confidence and self-esteem during one of life’s most challenging times is very common. A good quality wig can even be considered a kind of medical equipment, and actually wind up being one of the most used of all!

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