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Medical Negligence and Failures to Diagnose or Treat Cancer

Cancer is one of the most difficult diseases to cure; research is improving survival rates, but society is a long way from a complete cure. What's more, at later stages of the disease, the survival rate begins to drop dramatically. There are over 200 different types of the disease, and each variation carries different symptoms and survival rates. What they all have in common is that if you are suffering, a misdiagnosis of your cancer or a delayed diagnosis can seriously impact on your ability to survive or recover from the disease by:

• Increasing the time it takes for you to receive life-saving surgery
• Giving the disease more time to spread to other parts of your body
• Delaying the start of a course of chemotherapy
• Reducing the chance of radiotherapy shrinking your cancer

In some cases, you may not notice the warning signs or even realise that you are ill; however, even if you have detected the warning signs early, unfortunately, there are cases in which doctors or hospitals make mistakes that can be avoided and directly impact on your time spent waiting for treatment.

What Constitutes as Negligence?

When it comes to cancer, medical negligence towards you can take several forms; for one, it could arise from a failure to diagnose your disease correctly. Due to the wide range of types of cancer, your symptoms could be common to a multitude of other illnesses, which could lead a medical professional to give you a diagnosis of something entirely different. However, with the blood tests and biopsies that can be carried out to rule out cancer as an option, misdiagnosis of your illness shouldn't happen. Other instances of negligence can derive from errors in treatment. Perhaps a hospital has taken weeks or months to offer life-saving surgery to remove the cancer, giving the disease time to worsen.

How We Can Help

If you have suffered a misdiagnosis of cancer or a delay in diagnosis that has led to a more traumatic experience or worsening health, then we are here to help you.

We understand that a delay in diagnosing your cancer can result in more extensive treatment such as surgery, radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy that may otherwise have been avoided. We understand that more extensive treatment can have a severe strain on the financial, psychological and physical health of the whole family.

Our medical negligence team are recognised experts in conducting claims of this kind and with the involvement of a team of specialist experts we will help you to secure a financial settlement that will provide both financial security and a care package ensuring that your life-long care needs will be met.

Get In Touch or Call us on 0800 195 8467