subject: Family Of Female Patient Who Died From Colon Cancer After Diagnosis Holdup Compensated $950,000 By D [print this page] The appropriateness screening even asymptomatic people for colon cancer when they are 50 or older and for testing men and women who display certain symptoms like blood in the stool is generally established within the medical community. Not doing so could potentially result in a delay in the detection of colon cancer which in turn might allow the cancer to metastasize to other organs. Below we examine a case regarding a woman over the age of 50 whose physicians did not just fail to screen her during the years she did not have any symptoms but continued to not test her when she developed a number of symptoms.
Consider a lawsuit that arose from the following situation: a female treated with a primary care physician from when she was 50 years old to when she was 55. During that time her medical history included obesity, a hernia as well as hypertension. At no time however did her doctor ever do screening for colon cancer.She began experiencing various symptoms vomiting and bloody stool diarrhea after she turned fifty five. She took herself to the ER where a doctor told her that she had gastroenteritis. Within a week's time she went to her doctor for follw up. The doctor noted that she complained of having as many as three bowel movements a day. The physician also noted that she continued to have blood in her stools. This physician suggested a wait-and-see strategy and thought that she would need a lower G.I. endoscopy if her condition did not improve. The physician's differential diagnosis was for colitis. The doctor evidently never considered cancer as part of the differential diagnoses. A year afterwards she once more saw this doctor complaining of abdominal issues and as much as sixty pounds of unexplained weight loss. The doctor decided that her weight-loss was the result of a change in her diet and despite the fact that she had a background of blood in her stools that physician again failed to do any tests to eliminate colon cancer as the cause.
A month afterward the woman again went to the hospital with complaints of pain in her abdomen and continuing diarrhea and she was seeing blood present every time she vomited. Her stool was now a dark brown color and testing revealed blood present in the stool. The doctor at the ER realized that she had gastrointestinal bleeding. The ER doctor ordered an x-ray which revealed a partial blockage of the bowel. Following this finding the doctor admitted her to the hospital. Blood tests then revealed that her CEA, a marker for colon cancer, was abnormally high.At first a gastroenterologist performed an upper G.I. endoscopy and took several biopsies. This gastroenterologist also failed to perform a colonoscopy. It was not until a covering physician at the hospital recognized that her history was suspicious of cancer and that additional testing was needed that a sigmoidoscopy was finally performed about two weeks later. The sigmoidoscopy exposed a large blockage and a follow-up CAT scan found a large tumor. During surgery it was found that her cancer had already metastasized to both her uterus and to her bladder. Moreover the pathology report found the presence of cancer in 13 lymph nodes. The diagnosis - metastatic.
She started a chemotherapy protocol and after experiencing intolerance for the chemotherapy in conjunction with bowel obstructions and even renal failure, the woman died within a year after being diagnosed. She was just 58 years old. She was married and had two children both of whom were adults. Her family filed a claim against the physicians for the delay in the diagnosis of her cancer. The law firm that represented the family in this lawsuit published that they were able to obtain a settlement in the matter for just under one million dollars on behalf of the family.
