The Hazards of Delaying Cancer Treatment: Why Early Cancer Treatment Matters—and Results in Better Patient Outcomes

Cancer screening and an early diagnosis are vital to good health outcomes, but they are not enough alone to reduce cancer mortality. Besides early cancer detection, prompt treatment is critical, as delays in treatment reduce the chances of survival and a cure.

Sometimes those treatment postponements are due to a patient-attributable delay (PPAD) from the time an individual recognizes possible cancer symptoms to seeking medical attention. Patient-attributable delays may stem from cultural or emotional barriers, biases against certain treatment protocols, or social isolation or a disability that makes getting treatment difficult.

Some delays are systemic, such as issues related to insurance coverage and/or approvals, lack of access to specialists and/or treatment centers, or insufficient staffing that causes lag time between diagnosis and treatment.

In some cases, those treatment delays may be due to medical error or institutional barriers to prompt treatment. Some of these factors are inefficient diagnostic or therapeutic processes (for which the medical facility or a clinician may be at fault), or a missed, incorrect or delayed diagnosis that causes a failure to detect cancer. In these scenarios, patients may have grounds for a medical malpractice lawsuit.

The Importance of Early-Stage Treatment

Research from around the world shows that patients who experienced delays in cancer treatment have a higher mortality rate than others of statistical significance when oncologists and cancer researchers look at disease progression, treatment effectiveness, and mortality rates.

reported that cancer death rates and outcomes suffer from delays between biopsy and treatment.

• A study in Spain revealed that delays exceeding 90 days in breast cancer care were associated with a more than threefold higher risk for two-year mortality. The mortality rate among patients who sought medical care within 90 days was 3.2% and 11.7% among those who experienced delays exceeding 90 days.
• Closer to home, a SEER-Medicare data analysis showed that breast cancer treatment that was delayed more than 60 days after a needle biopsy resulted in a 45% higher risk of five-year-death rate compared to those treated in less than 60 days (3.8% vs. 2.6%).
• Another breast cancer study showed that surgery delays of more than eight weeks after a positive biopsy are significantly associated with a higher risk of death compared to those who received timely surgical treatment within two weeks.
• In a wide-ranging study of the association of cancer treatment delay and patient mortality, researchers at Queen’s University at Kingston in Canada reviewed the impact of delays in chemotherapy, surgery, radiation therapy, and other systemic treatments. They concluded that even a four-week delay in cancer treatment may increase the risk of death by up to 13%. (Some key findings are at https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2024/07/delayed-cancer-treatment-risks.)

Simply put, the goal is to reduce delays to treatment, since early diagnosis paired with prompt treatment optimizes results. If you suspect your physical symptoms may be cancer, don’t delay being tested and diagnosed. And if you receive a positive diagnosis for any type of cancer, starting treatment promptly should be a top priority.

Medical Malpractice in Cancer Misdiagnosis

As noted above, failure to diagnose or treat cancer timely may be medical negligence and malpractice. Four elements must be established in a cancer misdiagnosis malpractice case:

• Evidence of an existing doctor-patient relationship, which sets the stage for the expected standard of care.
• A demonstrated breach of the standard of care by the provider (which requires review by physician experts who are similarly trained and board-certified as the doctor in question); this means the provider fails to do something that should be done (e.g., failing to screen for cancer).
• The causation of otherwise avoidable injury—proof that the doctor’s negligence was a substantial factor in the harm and worsened the patient’s chances for cure.
• The patient must have suffered physical, financial, and emotional damages from this negligence that would otherwise not have occurred if the error had not been made.

Quantifying patient injury and damages is a critical aspect of the cancer misdiagnosis lawsuit and often requires expert testimony and detailed documentation and is part of any medical malpractice lawsuit we prosecute at our firm. If you feel that you experienced delays in your cancer treatment that was caused by an provider error that  led to more severe treatment or an earlier wrongful death, contact our medical malpractice attorneys for a consultation to discuss your options.