How A Malpractice Claim Might Follow A Doctor's Delay In Diagnosing Prostate Cancer

Imagine you are a male and you see your doctor for your yearly checkup

. Imagine the doctor orders blood tests, including a PSA test for the early diagnosis of prostate cancer. This is how to check if a man without any symptoms of prostate cancer might actually have it. Imagine the results actually were not normal.

Yet, there continues to be debate among some physicians over the way to test asymptomatic male patients for prostate cancer or even if screening is even appropriate. These doctors argue that screening has little, if any, value. If the result of a screening test is abnormal the man needs to be told about the results and either be referred to a specialist or be told about the option for diagnostic testing, such as a biopsy. Once more, however, a number of physicians also take the position that, at least under certain situations, a man diagnosed with prostate cancer does not need to undergo treatment immediately and simply needs to carefully monitor the cancer.

If the physician fails to give the patient the option to undergo screening or fails to tell the patient about the abnormal test results the patients prostate cancer may spread and metastasize without the man even knowing he may have cancer. However, if a physician detected that the patients prostate was enlarged or there was a nodule on the gland and the PSA test results showed abnormally high levels of the antigen and the doctor did not inform the man of the abnormal results, the man would probably believe that meant there was no need to follow up.

If the patient does really have cancer, not informing him that he might have cancer will postpone his diagnosis.

A delay could, in turn, give the cancer time to reach an advanced stage. Once a cancer metastasizes treatment can at best slow down the continuing growth of the cancer and lessen the effects (for example pain) of the cancer. Under such circumstances, that man and his family might be able to pursue a failure to diagnose medical malpractice lawsuit against the doctor.

Screening tests might yield false positives. This means that a percentage of patients with abnormal screening results will not have cancer. However doing screening tests for cancer is meaningless if there is no follow up as it gives the patient an incorrect sense of security thinking that he has no cancer as the doctor tested him and did not advise him that the screening tests demonstrated the possibility of cancer. Physicians normally recognize that there is a need for follow up if the results of screening tests come back as abnormal.

by: Joseph Hernandez

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