Physician Sued For Medical Malpractice By Couple For Three Year Wait In Detecting Cancer In Man's Prostate
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-08-23 13:18:51 | Word Count: 866
In cases regarding the delayed diagnosis of prostate cancer the majority of people focus solely on whether the doctor made a mistake. Taking a look at whether to take on a lawsuit, though, this is simply one of the issues that lawyers consider. There are two other factors that attorneys consider. First, did the doctor's mistake cause harm to the plaintiff. Second, is the harm enough that it justifies the economics of taking on the claim.
The medical records normally show the information that was available to the physician, including elevated PSA test results or abnormal findings on a physical examination of the prostate. These are the 2 tests that are typically employed to screen asymptomatic men for prostate cancer. It is also usually fairly easy to determine the amount of delay caused by the doctor's mistake. The delay is ordinarily the time that passed between when the individual was diagnosed and when the physician first had the information about the abnormal PSA or digital examination results.
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What might be harder to calculate is the degree of the harm to the individual. Except if the PSA surpasses at least a 10.0 (anything above a 4.0 is considered elevated) or a bone scan uncovers the presence of metastasis, even if the cancer has a high Gleason score, the majority of physicians would acknowledge that it is impossible to determine the stage of the cancer without performing surgery. The examination of the tissue collected in the course of the surgery determines if the cancer had already spread beyond the prostate. Despite a PSA higher than a 10.0 it is nevertheless possible that the cancer has not penetrated outside the prostate and that surgery can eliminate the cancer.
In one published claim, a fifty two year old man had his PSA taken by his physician The lab noted that the PSA level was normal. Two years after the doctor again ordered a PSA test for the man. This time, however, the result showed that his PSA level had reached a 4.2. Not only is this level generally regarded as high (as outlined in medical textbooks and papers) but the lab that analyzed the blood sample in fact marked the level as high in its document to the physician. The doctor followed the man four times in the course of the next 2 . 5 years without ever informing the patient of the abnormal test result or doing a follow-up PSA test. The patient next had his PSA tested by the same physician 3 years after that abnormal reading. Now the results indicated a PSA level of 5.25. The PSA level had risen.
This was the first time the physician informed the man of the prior elevated level. Once these results came in, the physician referred the man to a urologist. A biopsy disclosed that he had cancer. During surgery his doctors discovered that the cancer had already spread to the seminal vesicles and there was also vascular as well as perineal invasion. Given that the cancer had by then started growing outsid the prostate, the surgery lowered his PSA level but was not able to eliminate all the cancer. The patient thus underwent hormone therapy. His PSA levels then started to rise post-operatively. This indicates a poor prognosis so that it is improbable that the patient will survive five years past the surgery.
The law firm that represented the man and his family documented that they attained a settlement over $500,000 on behalf of the man and his family. The man was 60 years old when the lawsuit settled The settlement agreement left the chance of a wrongful death case should the patient not survive beyond the relevant statute of limitations.
As this case shows, the full degree of the harm to the patient was not known until the results of the surgery were analyzed and showed that the cancer hadreached areas outside the prostate. Furthermore it was not until the patient's PSA levels began to increase after the surgery that the true extent of the harm was know. At that point the lawyer was in a position to be able to completely evaluate the patient's claim. An important teaching point from this case is how the law firm made sure that the man's wife did not lose the right to pursue a wrongful death claim if her husband died of the cancer within the time frame allowed by the Statute of Limitations Of course if there will later be a wrongful death lawsuit that may be pursued will depend on various factors like whether the man will die from the cancer or from a different cause and whether it takes place within the time frame permitted by the relevant statute of limitations and statute of repose.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an attorney accepting cancer malpractice cases. To learn about metastatic prostate cancer and other cancer matters including breastcancer visit the websites
