Doctor Sued For Medical Malpractice By Couple For Three Year Delay In Detecting Cancer In Man's Prostate

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Doctor Sued For Medical Malpractice By Couple For Three Year Delay In Detecting Cancer In Man's Prostate

In cases involving the delayed diagnosis of prostate cancer most individuals concentrate just on whether the physician made a mistake. But this is only one issue that a lawyer must consider when assessing a potential case. There are 2 other factors that lawyers consider. First, did the doctor's error cause harm to the patient. Second, is the injury enough that it makes sense economically to pursue a claim.

Look at a malpractice claim where a doctor ordered a PSA blood test on a male patient when the patient was 52 years old. The PSA level was 2.0 at that time. This level is usually deemed to be normal. Two years later the physician repeated a PSA test for the man. This time, though, the result showed a level of 4.2. This was noted as elevated in the document supplied by the lab that conducted the blood analysis. The doctor followed the patient four times in the course of the next two and a half years but did not tell the man of the abnormal test result or ordering a follow-up PSA test. The patient next had his PSA tested by the same doctor 3 years after that abnormal reading. At that time the results showed a PSA level of 5.25. It had gone up.

This was the first time the doctor advised the man about the previously elevated level. Once these results came in, the physician referred the man to a urologist. A biopsy revealed that the patient had cancer. Surgery revealed that the cancer had already spread to the seminal vesicles and there was also vascular as well as perineal invasion. Since the cancer had already began growing outsid the prostate, the surgery was not curative. The patient therefore underwent hormone therapy. His PSA levels then started to rise post-operatively. This implies a poor prognosis so that it is unlikely that the man will live five years after the surgery.
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The law firm that handled this matter reported that the case settled in the amout of $550,000 The man was 60 years old at the time of the settlement. The agreement left the possibility of a wrongful death case should the patient not survive beyond the applicable statute of limitations.

As this lawsuit illustrates, the nature of the harm to the patient was not known until the results of the surgery were evaluated and confirmed that the cancer had, in fact, already begun spreading outside the prostate. And it was not until the patient's PSA levels started to go up post-operatively that the true extent of the injury was know. At that point the lawyer was able to fully evaluate the patient's case. Keep in mind that in structuring the settlelemt, the law firm made sure to keep open a wrongful death claim. Understanding the inevitable meaning of the post-surgical rise in the PSA they made certain to leave the possibility of a wrongful death claim open. Obviously whether there will later be a wrongful death lawsuit that can be pursued will depend on a number of factors including whether the man will die due to the cancer or because of a different cause and whether it happens within the time frame permitted by the applicable statute of limitations and statute of repose.

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