Long Island Breast Cancer Lawyer

At Duffy & Duffy, our Long Island breast cancer lawyers see many medical malpractice cases involving misdiagnosis, side effects, or delayed treatment of a breast cancer diagnosis. Breast cancer is an aggressive disease, but the harshest outcomes can often be prevented with early detection, information, and appropriate medical care. The objective of treating breast cancer is to find and treat it before it causes serious symptoms. Nowadays, early detection and diagnosis often result in a better prognosis for a patient, which may lead to eventual breast cancer treatment. However, not identifying breast cancer early enough may result in multiple surgeries, chemotherapy, painful and prolonged treatments, or even a premature death.

Seeking Damages Based on a Failure to Diagnose Breast Cancer

There has been significant breast cancer progress in terms of public education, ability to diagnose, and evaluation about the value of early breast cancer detection by patients through self-examination. Unfortunately, a woman may find a lump upon self-examination and may be told by her physician that it is not anything to worry about resulting in a breast cancer misdiagnosis. Many healthcare professionals are negligent in failing to make a timely cancer diagnosis. They may ignore warning signs and evidence or fail to order proper testing or diagnostic, such as mammograms or biopsies, or they may misread the results of a test or fail to follow up with the patient, this is a sign of malpractice. Furthermore, the discovery of breast cancer may require procedures such as a double mastectomy or the need for certain drugs and medications. The failure to detect the disease and its misdiagnosis in its early stages can result in breast cancer effects that progress due to lack of proper treatment, with devastating consequences for patients and their families. A lawyer in Long Island could work to prepare a lawsuit based on breast cancer misdiagnosis.

Proving Breast Cancer Medical Malpractice

A victim with breast cancer trying to prove a misdiagnosis medical malpractice case will need to prove that the actions of the doctor in question fell below the appropriate standard of care, and this breach of care caused an injury to the victim according to the law. The standard of care for a cancer diagnosis is usually defined as the level of precaution taken by a medical professional of similar training or experience when faced with the same situation. Both the duty itself and the question of whether the defendant breached it will require the testimony of an expert witness, who can be a doctor from a hospital or a medical professor.

One of the most challenging aspects for a Long Island lawyer of a failure to diagnose breast cancer case is showing that the plaintiff’s injuries were caused by the doctor or other health care professional’s failure to diagnose rather than by the natural course of cancer. There are a number of reasons why a physician might fail to diagnose colon cancer or misdiagnose breast cancer. These misdiagnoses can include improperly examining the patient, failing to perform regular screenings in high-risk patients susceptible to cancer, failing to recognize that a problem is indicated, failing to follow up with a patient’s complaints, failing to order the appropriate breast cancer tests or misinterpreting those test results and information that are taken, misdiagnosing a tumor as benign, or failing to follow up with the patient to order additional tests or refer the patient to a breast cancer specialist as needed following a diagnosis.