Colon Cancer Malpractice

Colon cancer or colorectal cancer, which refers to cancer of both the colon and the rectum, is a type of cancer that affects the large intestine, that is the part of the intestine that is more distal or further down in the gastrointestinal tract. Colon cancer malpractice cases, like other types of cancer malpractice cases, have to do with delays in diagnosing and treating colon cancer. The most common questions we get from clients regarding any cancer case and any medical malpractice case for that matter are number one, do I have a case? And in order to answer that question, we typically have to do several things. Number one, we have to gather all the relevant medical records. Number two, we review those medical records in-house, which, again, we have the advantage of having myself and Gary Zucker's experience in reviewing those often enormous amount of records and we do so very efficiently and effectively. We then, after reviewing them if we deem them to indicate that there is a suspicion for malpractice, we will get appropriate specialists involved. Those specialists may be from particular areas related to cancer. They may be related to surgery. Yhey may be related to radiology. And after we take all those opinions and gather all that information, we as lawyers have to decide whether or not we have enough evidence to bring forth a medical malpractice claim. And this is something we advise our clients and we share with them every detail regarding that process. Another type of question we get from clients who come into our office and have any type of medical malpractice claim is, how long will my claim take to litigate? There is a time frame in New York of approximately three to five years that medical malpractice cases take to get to completion. The reason for that is that these cases are notoriously litigated extensively. Unlike a personal injury case, medical malpractice cases tend to be litigated for several years at least. Our firm is unique in that we have a very aggressive approach to making sure that discovery gets completed. We do everything we can to push the case forward and bring it to resolution in a timely fashion. A common type of case we've seen in our office involving colon cancer is that a healthcare provider simply failed to recommend a colonoscopy be performed after age 50. When a colonoscopy is performed, there may be abnormal lesions that are found, and those lesions are often sampled by the gastroenterologist or other physician who is performing the colonoscopy. And those samples are sent to a laboratory, that review then generates a report which is sent to the gastroenterologist to review. What we have seen at our practice is that oversights during that process, that sample being sent to the pathologist for review and that report being sent to the gastroenterologist, errors in that process either by the pathologist or by the gastroenterologist often lead to mistakes that then lead to missed opportunities to treat colon cancer at an early stage. The most critical thing about colon cancer is catching it early. There is no more effective way to treating and making sure that colon cancer does not result in death.