Skin Cancer Claims Solicitors

Like all forms of cancer, if skin cancer is diagnosed in its early stages, treatment is more likely to be effective and protect someone’s long-term prognosis. For instance, Stage 1 melanoma has a near-100% survival rate for five years or more after diagnosis.

For some forms of melanoma, early diagnosis and treatment can be crucial, as these moles and lesions can grow quickly and spread to a patient’s other organs, bones or blood. This can make treatment much more severe and long-lasting, and reduce a patient’s long-term survival rate.

A skin cancer misdiagnosis occurs when a healthcare professional fails to identify the warning signs of skin cancer, leading to a misdiagnosis or a delay in diagnosis. This can mean the cancer progresses to later stages and potentially spreads to a patient’s other organs, bones or blood.

Depending on how long it takes for a diagnosis to be reached, this delay can significantly change someone’s treatment options and long-term survival prospects.

To determine whether a healthcare professional breached their duty of care towards you leading to a misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis, we will work with an impartial medical expert in the same role as the professional accused of the breach of duty.

By outlining the evidence of the case to these professionals, they will inform us what steps should have been taken based on your condition at the time of your diagnosis. This helps us paint a picture of how you should have been treated and the steps that would have followed, which we can compare to what actually happened.

It is important to note that a skin cancer misdiagnosis claim can only be brought if the delay affected the treatment options or prognosis. For example, if you were misdiagnosed by your GP, but then saw another healthcare professional a week later who referred you, this delay may not have been significant enough to change anything, meaning there is nothing to claim for.

Also, a misdiagnosis or delay in diagnosis may not be grounds for a claim if there was reasonable cause to pursue other diagnoses prior to this. This could be because the symptoms were more likely to be another condition, or the need to rule out conditions that present a more urgent concern to someone’s health.

Establishing causation in a skin cancer misdiagnosis claim

It can sometimes be difficult to determine who is responsible for a skin cancer misdiagnosis. Working with independent healthcare professionals, including specialist oncologists, we will establish when it is most likely that a cancer progressed from one stage to another, resulting in a change to the treatment options and prognosis.

In medical negligence claims causation is judged on the Balance of Probabilities – whether something was more likely than not to be the case. Therefore, an expert will provide an opinion on when it is most likely that your skin cancer progressed to a later stage.

For this reason, we may look to establish causation of your injuries before investigating whether duty of care was breached. This is helpful because:

• It helps us identify which healthcare professionals could and could not have made a difference with an earlier diagnosis, ensuring that no time is wasted pursuing irrelevant defendants

• It informs us whether your condition could have been treated sooner and had a better outcome

The compensation awarded following a successful skin cancer misdiagnosis claim is designed to help return you to the position you would have been in had they been diagnosed and treated at the right time. Or, when this is not possible, provide financial support for the changes made to your life moving forward.

In these types of claims, compensation is often used to cover the costs of:

• Loss of earnings caused by more severe and extensive treatments

• Private medical treatments, such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, etc.

• Any necessary equipment or aids

• Therapies for psychological support

Sadly, a delay in diagnosing melanoma cancer could greatly affect someone’s life expectancy, causing them to pass away earlier than if the condition had been diagnosed sooner. In these instances, it is possible for beneficiaries of the claimant’s estate and those who were dependent on services provided by the claimant to continue to pursue their claim.

While no amount of compensation can reduce the loss of a loved one, it can help ease the financial burden on their dependents, and support their lives beyond this tragedy. You can learn more about making a claim following the death of a loved one here.

How long do skin cancer claims take to settle?

It is impossible to accurately determine how long it will take for a skin cancer misdiagnosis claim to reach final settlement – each claim is unique and will be affected by the stance taken by defendants and how long it takes to receive answers from medical experts. However, we would anticipate most claims of this nature will settle between two and five years.

When making an enquiry with a solicitor, if you are immediately given an exact timeline for your case or a specific amount of compensation to pursue, we advise you to proceed with caution. It is highly unlikely this will be accurate without a thorough examination of your claim and speaking to relevant experts, and could suggest they are only doing what they can to secure your case.

How long do I have to make a claim?

Like other medical negligence claims, there is a three-year time limit to make a claim for a skin cancer misdiagnosis. However, there are exceptions to this which include (but are not limited to):

• Children have until their 21st birthday to make a claim

• There is no time limit if the claimant is considered mentally incapacitated

This three-year time limit begins according to the Date of Knowledge. This is important in claims of this nature, as it can be several months or years before a claimant becomes aware that the diagnosis they received from their GP or another healthcare professional was incorrect.

The Date of Knowledge ensures the three-year limit starts when a claimant should have reasonably suspected they had been misdiagnosed, not when the misdiagnosis occurred.

If the claimant passes away within the three-year time period for the claim to be brought, the three-year limit restarts from the date of their death.