The second largest number of cancer fatalities is from colon cancer.. Every year, around 48,000 men and women will pass away due to colon cancer. Many of these deaths could be prevented with early diagnosis and treatment through routine colon cancer screening of asymptomatic people.

When the cancer is located as a small polyp while undergoing a regularly scheduled screening test, like a colonoscopy, the polyp may be able to be removed during the colonoscopy without the requirement for the surgical removal of any portion of the colon. Once the polyp grows to the point where it becomes cancerous and gets to Stage I or Stage II, the tumor and a section of the colon on each side is surgical taken out. The relative 5-year survival rate is over ninety percent for Stage 1 and 73% for Stage II.

If the cancer reaches a Stage III, a colon resection is no longer sufficient. The patient will, in addition, need to have chemotherapy. At this stage the likelihood that the person will still be alive over 5 years subsequent to the diagnosis is reduced to fifty three percent, depending on such factors as the quantity of lymph nodes that have cancer.

By the time the colon cancer gets to the fourth Stage, treatment might call for undergoing chemotherapy and perhaps other drugs along with surgery on other organs. In case the dimensions and number of tumors in other organs (like the liver and lungs) are sufficiently few, surgery on these organs may be the primary treatment, followed by chemotherapy. In some cases the dimensions or number of tumors in the other organs takes away the possibility of surgery as a treatment.

If chemotherapy and different drugs can reduce the quantity and dimensions of these tumors, surgery might at that point turn out to be a viable second form of treatment. Otherwise, chemotherapy and different drugs (possibly from clinical trials) may temporarily stop or reduce the continued spread of the cancer. With metastasis the person's chance of outliving the cancer for greater than five years following diagnosis is reduced to around eight percent.

The statistics are clear. The time frame in which the cancer is found and treated results in a significant difference. If discovered and treated early, the person has an excellent chance of surviving the disease. When detection and treatment is delayed, the probability starts turning against the individual so that once the colon cancer gets to Stage 3, the percentage is almost 50/50. And the likelihood declines greatly when the colon cancer reaches Stage IV.

However, all too often doctors fail to suggest routine cancer screening to their patients. When the cancer is finally detected - many times because the tumor has grown so large that it is causing blockage, since the individual has inexplicable anemia that is getting progressively worse, or because the individual starts to notice other indications - the colon cancer is a Stage 3 or even a Stage 4. The individual now confronts a very different prognosis than if the cancer had been discovered early through routine screening.

In medical malpractice terms, the person has sustained a "loss of chance" of a better recovery. That is to say, since the doctor failed to recommend that the person have a routine screening test, the cancer is now much more advanced and the individual faces a much reduced likelihood of outliving the cancer. A doctor might be liable for not meeting the standard of care if he or she does not propose cancer screening to a patient who later is found to have advanced colon cancer.