600,000 Settlement After Physician Did not Notify Patient Tests Uncovered Possibility Of Prostate Cancer

Male patients tend to possess a scant understanding of prostate cancer

, their own chances for the cancer, and the ways in which they can figure out if they have prostate cancer. Most male patients do not even know what it means to screen for prostate cancer or that screening needs to be performed prior to when they develop symptoms. They trust that their physician will do whatever is appropriate to detect any cancer in the beginning stages and cure them.

Delayed diagnosis of prostate cancer incidents are all too common. This article will consider the following pattern: the physician (1) orders a PSA blood test, (2) discovers that the individual has a high PSA level, however (3) neither tells the patient about the abnormal results (and what they mean) nor orders diagnostic tests, such as a biopsy, to eliminate prostate cancer. Consider the following claim, for example:

In this reported claim a man found out he had prostate cancer after he followed up when advised by his internist that he probably had cancer. The problem in this case was that the physician did not tell the patient that he could have cancer for 3 years after the first raised PSA test results. The year prior the man's PSA level had risen to 13.6. Two years before that it had been at 8.0 Throughout these years the physician took no action to rule out prostate cancer as the cause of these high readings and did not inform the patient. By the time he was diagnosed he had metastatic prostate cancer and surgery was not among the treatment alternatives. Rather the patient underwent radiation therapy and hormone therapy in an attempt to stall the further progression of the cancer. The law firm that handled this matter reported that they took the lawsuit to mediation where they achieved a settlement of $600,000.

If they do not do anything after the screening tests results come back positive and the patient subsequently finds out that he had prostate cancer and that the lag time lead to it spreading beyond the prostate gland thereby limiting treatment possibilities and decreasing his chances of surviving the cancer, the individual may be able to successfully pursue a lawsuit against the doctor.

This lawsuit illustrates a sort of error that can lead to the delayed diagnosis of a patient's prostate cancer. It comes about when the doctor actually follows the guidelines and screens male patients for prostate cancer yet does not follow through when the test results are abnormal.

600,000 Settlement After Physician Did not Notify Patient Tests Uncovered Possibility Of Prostate Cancer

By: J. Hernandez

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