Situations concerning the delayed diagnosis of breast cancer generally involve 1 or 2 medical errors - failing to recommend diagnostic tests to exclude the possibility of cancer when a lump is felt in the breast and incorrectly interpreting a mammogram. Should a doctor make one of these errors and thus holds up the diagnosis of the cancer until it spreads, she may have a claim for malpractice. The first mistake made by physicians is not performing any diagnostic testing when a woman informs the doctor that she found a mass while doing a self-conducted breast examination or the physician detects the lump during a screening clinical breast examination. Certain doctors will tell the female patient she has only a benign cyst, commonly if she is younger than forty and does not have a of breast cancer in her family.

But, despite the fact that most new cases of breast cancer appear in women more than 50 years old, younger women can, and are, diagnosed with breast cancer regularly. Additionally, it is not possible to establish, based on a clinical breast examination, if a mass in the breast is a benign cyst or is a cancerous mass. Because of this , a physician ought to perform diagnostic testing in order to determine if the mass is cancerous. Among the tests that can be ordered are a mammogram, a biopsy or an aspiration.

If the patient does have breast cancer, not recommending diagnostic testing can result in the metastasis of the cancer.

The other error made by doctors is to incorrectly interpret a mammogram. Mammograms are taken to see structures in the breast that might be cancerous. The mammogram creates pictures of the inside of the breast with low dose x-rays of the woman's compressed breast. The resulting images are then analyzed by doctors for the presence of any structures or changes that might be cancerous.

Regrettably, physicians in some cases overlook what is basically in front of their eyes. At times doctors overlook an abnormality that turns up in the mammogram. In some other cases, physicians wrongly diagnose an abnormal structure or change as harmless without recommending any diagnostic examination such as a biopsy to exclude the possibility of cancer.

Either of the errors described above can lead to a delay in the detection of the woman's cancer. The longer the detection of breast cancer is delayed, the more likely it is that the cancer will spread and reach an advanced stage. If the cancer becomes advanced, the treatment alternatives available to the patient are more restricted. In addition, the woman's 5-year survival rate, the chance she has of surviving the cancer for five years or more, even with treatment, lessens drastically.

Once the cancer gets to the third stage, the survival rate drops to fifty-five percent and by the fourth stage it is only roughly twenty percent. Had the cancer been detected early, the 5-year survival rate would have been over eighty percent, possibly as high as over 95% if it had been diagnosed early enough.

Medical mistakes can have terrible outcomes. This is particularly true for people with cancer. Any hold up to the detection of the cancer may lead to the loss of the breast, limited treatment possibilities, and in some cases, might be fatal. Under such circumstances, medical mistakes like the ones discussed in this article might amount to malpractice.