Cancer Compensation Claims

Cancer Compensation Claims

Many types of cancer can be treated successfully if treatment is given in the early stages.  Doing so is easier when cancer’s diagnosed at an early stage as treatment is often simpler and more likely to be effective. So finding cancer early can make a real difference. Unfortunately, sometimes a correct diagnosis is not made, and sometimes cancers are missed altogether. Clinical Negligence solicitors report that, misdiagnosis of cancer is one of the most common cases they have to deal with. If you or someone you know has ever been the victim of this type of medical negligence, you will know how distressing and traumatic it can be.

 Some of the cases our solicitors have experience with include:

• Failure to identify an obvious lump during breast examination

• Failure to arrange appropriate investigations, such as biopsies, x-rays, CT or MRI scans

• Failure to properly evaluate or follow up test results

• Failure to recognise common symptoms of the particular form of cancer

• Failure to diagnosis a tumour as malignant

Would correct diagnosis have made a difference?

Even when there is evidence of a failure or delay in diagnosis we must prove that it has made a difference to the treatment and/or outcome. It is important to get advice from a professional clinical negligence solicitor.

Late diagnosis is seen as a major reason why the UK has poorer survival rates than some other countries in Europe.

Patients are dying of cancer because GPs are failing to identify their symptoms, the government's top cancer expert has warned. Professor Mike Richards said botched diagnoses were now 'a significant concern'

In an interview with The Observer, Richards, national cancer director at the Department of Health, warned about the consequences of these mistakes. 'Ultimately it can mean that the cancer has progressed to a stage where it can't be cured,'. Failed diagnoses also meant that, when cancers were eventually spotted, particularly aggressive treatments, such as chemotherapy or surgery, had to be used. 'That could be a mastectomy rather than perhaps a breast conserving operation,' he said

'There are 250,000 new patients with cancer every year,' said Richards. 'It's probably only a small proportion who experiences a missed or delayed diagnosis. It's a small minority of patients overall. But it's not a negligible figure. We want to reduce this to the smallest possible number.'

Cancer in children and breast cancer were especially hard to diagnose, he said. 'There will be a significant number of women with breast cancer where this may happen, especially where cancer is uncommon, for example women under 50 and even under 40. This can happen among that group. It can happen with any cancer.'

• More than 1,900 patients - 55 a month - suffered a missed or late diagnosis, though officials admitted the problem was probably much greater

• Patients waited for periods between a day and 23 months to have their condition confirmed because of diagnostic errors, often at their GP's surgery

• Breast, bowel and lung cancer were the likeliest to involve a botched diagnoses

• Blunders in hospitals added to delays in cancers being identified. These include X-rays, biopsies or blood tests misfiled or misread.

'This is an important issue because in some cases things are going wrong,' said Ben Thomas of the Patient Safety Agency. 'Nobody wants this to happen. Nobody wants to miss a diagnosis or have a late diagnosis. But it does happen. This could happen to anyone. Unfortunately people suffer and people die. We think that practitioner delay, where someone turns up at the GP with symptoms but there's a delay in the GP referring the patient to a specialist, is fairly common.'

Richards said some GPs felt they could not refer patients for tests as often as they would like in case hospitals became overloaded. 'Many patients are referred the first time they go to their GP. But some will go three, four, or even more times,' he said.

Richards's comments come as cancer charities warn that some GPs are wrongly telling sufferers they have other, less serious conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome, haemorrhoids or gastroenteritis, and send them away with tablets. Similarly some patients in their twenties, thirties and forties are being misadvised by their GP that they are too young to have breast or bowel cancer, which mainly affects the over-50s, despite early signs of the disease.

Cancer experts agree it can be hard for GPs to identify correctly the signs of the disease, partly because the symptoms of certain cancers are also those associated with many other illnesses. A typical GP with a list of 1,800 patients will only see eight or nine new cancer patients every year, and there are about 200 different types of cancer.

'Cancer is difficult to identify and GPs sometimes get it wrong,' said Dr Steve Field, a Birmingham GP and the chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners. Many of the signs of cancer, such as tiredness, weight loss and rectal bleeding, are also associated with many other conditions, making diagnosis difficult, Field said.

GPs sometimes did not glean enough information about a patient's health from their case history or physical examination to indicate if it is cancer, and some feel they need to see a patient several times before forming a judgment on what was wrong with them, he said.

“Sourced from The Guardian and The Observer”

Over the years Medical-Accidents has seen many medical negligence claims involving cancer misdiagnosis. All our solicitors are dedicated to representing victims and their families in order to obtain the financial security they deserve.

Contact us today for a friendly, ‘no obligation’ chat about your case.