subject: Physician Pays $1.25 Million To Family Of Person Who Died After Years Of Delay In Cancer Diagnosis [print this page] In some cases colon cancers bleedIn some cases colon cancers bleed. In certain cases, the blood might be visible in the stool. IN those circumstances in which the cancer is in the vicinity of the rectum, the blood may even show up as bright red. Even when the blood cannot be seen, it may nonetheless be possible to discover that the individual is bleeding in other ways. As an example, the loss of blood might manifest as anemia. Blood tests might reveal internal blood loss that might be due to a tumor in the colon. The main blood test results to check are the hemoglobin, hematocrit, and Mean Corpuscular Volume (MCV) levels. Levels below the normal range may suggest blood loss and iron deficiency anemia. Any time an individual has levels that are low for these tests physicians commonly acknowledge that there ought to be additional testing to discover the reason for the blood loss, including the chance of cancer of the colon.
Consider the case of a sixty four year old male patient whose blood tests revealed all of the above. The next year, the patient's blood work revealed a worsening of the patient's problem. Additionally, a guaiac test revealed that there was blood in the patient's stool. Without any more testing, the patient's doctor added a diagnosis of hemorrhoids into the man's chart. In addition, the man's PSA level (a test that is used to screen males for prostate cancer) was a 10.3 (a level above a 4.0 is usually regarded as high and troubling for prostate cancer). The physician made no mention in the patient's chart to indicate an having examined the gland. The physician did not relay to the person about the high PSA levels and did not refer the individual to a specialist.
Approximately 2 years later the individual was seen by a different doctor. Given the patient's age this physician ordered a barium enema. The result: a diagnosis of advanced colon cancer. The individual died of the spread of the cancer not even three years following his diagnosis. The patient's family pursued a claim against the doctor who overlooked the patient's abnormally low blood test results and overlooked the presence of blood in the man's stool. The law firm that handled the lawsuit was able to report that it settled for $1.25 million.
Blood tests are done for a reason. Abnormal test outcomes suggest that something may be wrong, perhaps even dangerously wrong with the individual and call for follow up. Sometimes follow up means repeating the blood test in just a short amount of time to see if the levels improve but when the levels deviate sufficiently from normal levels or continue to worsen, physicians ordinarily acknowledge that this increases the need to order proper supplemental tests to determine the reason behind those levels. Doctors also usually concur that blood in the stool of an adult patient calls for fast attention to eliminate the possibility of colon cancer as the reason. A colonoscopy is usually used to look at all the colon and either locate or rule out the presence of any tumors. This physician failed to do any of this.
