Keeping Doctors Accountable For Delaying Diagnosis Of Prostate Cancer
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-08-04 12:45:12 | Word Count: 476
Imagine you are a male and you see your physician for your yearly checkup. Imagine the doctor orders blood tests, including a PSA test which is used for the early diagnosis of prostate cancer. So far, so good. This is how to determine whether a man without any symptoms of prostate cancer might actually have it. Imagine the tests came back outside the normal range
Yet, there is still debate amid some physicians over how to screen asymptomatic men for prostate cancer or even if screening is even necessary. They take the position that screening has little, if any, value. One factor, however, remains constant. If the result of a screening test is abnormal the individual should be told of the results and either be referred to a specialist or be told about the option for diagnostic testing, like a biopsy. Once more, though, a number of physicians also take the position that, at least under certain instances, a male patient who is diagnosed with prostate cancer does not need to undergo treatment immediately and only should carefully monitor the cancer.
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Should this happen, the cancer becomes incurable before the patient turns symptomatic and is finally diagnosed. However, if a doctor detected that the patient's 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 physician failed to inform the patient of the abnormal results, the patient would likely believe that meant there was no need to follow up.
If the patient does really have cancer, not telling him that he might have cancer will postpone his diagnosis. A delay might, in turn, allow the cancer to spread. When a cancer metastasizes treatment will at best slow down the spread of the cancer and lessen the effects (for example pain) of the cancer. There is a category of lawsuits in which the male patient was ultimately diagnosed yet by that time the cancer has spread and a cure was no longer possible.
Screening tests might yield false positives. This means that a percentage of patients with abnormal screening results actually do not have cancer. But performing screening tests for cancer is meaningless without follow up as it provides the patient an incorrect sense of security believing that he has no cancer as the physician screened him but said nothing to him that the tests showed he might have cancer. Physicians typically recognize the need for follow up if the results of screening tests come back as abnormal.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an attorney accepting cancer cases. Find more information about metastatic prostate cancer and other cancer matters including metastasized breast cancer visit the websites
