The bladder is an organ in the pelvis that stores urine prior to its leaving the body. The kidneys make urine and move it to the bladder through ureters. Both sexes can get bladder cancer. This cancer occurs when cells in the bladder grow uncontrollably, resulting in a tumor, which is a growth of abnormal tissue in the bladder lining. Sometimes more cancer cells develop and spread throughout the body. A bladder cancer diagnosis can be frightening. However, if it is caught early, as with other cancers, there is a better survival rate. If you were a victim of a failure to diagnose bladder cancer, the knowledgeable Syracuse cancer misdiagnosis lawyers at DeFrancisco & Falgiatano may be able to help you recover damages.
Pursuing Compensation for Harm Caused by a Bladder Cancer MisdiagnosisSymptoms of bladder cancer include blood in the urine, pain in the pelvic area, and frequent urination, including often getting up in the night to urinate. However, these symptoms can also be indicative of other infections or illnesses. A urologist is a specialist to whom a patient should be referred when they repeatedly have these kinds of symptoms.
When diagnosing a patient, doctors are usually supposed to use what is known as a differential diagnosis. This is a process in which the doctor lists different possible diagnoses that would explain the symptoms with which a patient presents. In other words, they would try to list from most likely to least likely the diseases or conditions that are likely to produce the symptoms that are described by the patient. The doctor then tries to test each of these possibilities in order to rule them out or find the right one.
In some cases involving a failure to diagnose cancer, a doctor omits a possible diagnosis of bladder cancer, while in other cases, a doctor does not conduct the appropriate tests to sufficiently test a bladder cancer theory. Sometimes there is a flaw in a lab or scan and how it is interpreted, and this results in a failure to diagnose.
When a doctor fails to consider bladder cancer on a differential diagnosis list or does not test it sufficiently, they may have committed malpractice. Often, a key issue in determining whether there was malpractice is to look at what a reasonably prudent doctor would have done when confronted with the same set of symptoms.
If you claim that there was a failure to diagnose bladder cancer, your attorney will need to show that there existed a physician-patient relationship, the physician failed to abide by the professional standard of care in diagnosing you, and the physician's failure to diagnose caused your injuries. In some cases, it is difficult to show that it was the physician's failure to diagnose bladder cancer that caused an injury, rather than the bladder cancer itself simply progressing.
In failure to diagnose bladder cancer cases, it is crucial to retain a credible expert to give an opinion about the defendant's differential diagnosis, as well as the issue of causation. Generally, an expert must be in the same specialty as the defendant doctor, and they must be able to say that the failure to diagnose (or misdiagnosis) made the injury worse than what it would have been had a correct diagnosis been made.
For example, if a patient would have had a chance of survival had the cancer been caught at the time that the patient first came to see the doctor, but instead the patient died, the expert may be able to testify that the wrongful death was caused by the doctor. However, in other cases, causation is more ambiguous. For example, if the cancer simply progresses to stage 4, rather than being caught at stage 2, it can be harder for an expert to provide testimony that any additional harm was a result of the cancer not being diagnosed in time instead of just being an outcome caused by the progression of the cancer, irrespective of the doctor's actions.
Get Assistance from a Knowledgeable Syracuse Lawyer for Your ClaimIf you are harmed due to a doctor's failure to diagnose bladder cancer in Syracuse, Rochester, or the surrounding areas, our law firm may be able to help you recover damages from responsible parties. Our misdiagnosis lawyers also represent injured patients suffering from prostate cancer, uterine cancer, and other forms of cancer in communities such as Binghamton, Auburn, Elmira, Norwich, Cortland, Delhi, Herkimer, Watertown, Lowville, Oneida, Wampsville, Utica, Canandaigua, Oswego, Cooperstown, Ithaca, Lyons, and all of Upstate New York. Call us at 833-200-2000 or contact us via our online form.