Doctor Pays Out $1,250,000 To Family Of Individual Who Died After Multi Year Delay Before Detection Of Colon Cancer
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-10-28 01:56:02 | Word Count: 619
There are times when colon cancers bleed. Under some circumstances, the blood might be visible in the stool. In cases where the cancer is close to the rectum, the blood may even appear as bright red. Even when the blood is not visible, the bleeding may be detectible in other ways. For example, the loss of blood might appear as anemia. Blood tests may show internal loss of blood that could be from cancer in the colon. Important blood test results to evaluate are the hemoglobin, hematocrit, and Mean Corpuscular Volume (MCV) levels. Low levels might mean blood loss and iron deficiency anemia. If someone is found to have levels that are below normal levels for these tests physicians normally agree that there ought to be follow up to discover the cause of the blood loss, like the chance of cancer of the colon.
Look at the matter of a sixty four year old man whose blood tests exhibited all of the above. The following year, the individual's blood work found a deterioration of the person's condition. Also, the man's stools were discovered to contain blood. Without any more testing or referring the individual to a gastroenterologist the indivual's doctor entered a diagnosis of hemorrhoids into the man's record. Furthermore, 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 normally deemed high and suggestive of possible prostate cancer). The doctor made no mention in the individual's chart to indicate an having examined the gland. The physician did not relay to him about the high PSA levels and did not refer the patient to a specialist.
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Roughly 2 years after the patient went to a different doctor. Because of the patient's age this doctor had him undergo a barium enema. The result: a diagnosis of advanced colon cancer. The person died of metastatic colon cancer less than three years subsequent to his diagnosis. The individual's family pursued a claim against the doctor who ignored the patient's abnormally low blood test results and dismissed the presence of blood in the man's stool. The law firm that handled the matter was able to report that it settled for $1.25 million.
Blood tests are done for a reason. Abnormal test outcomes are indicators that something might be wrong, perhaps even critically wrong with the patient and require follow up. At times follow up means repeating the blood test in just a short amount of time to find out if the levels improve. But when the levels deviate sufficiently from normal levels or continue to worsen, physicians commonly agree that this increases the importance of ordering appropriate supplemental tests to determine the explanation for those levels. Physicians further usually consent that blood in the stool of an adult person calls for fast attention to eliminate the possibility of colon cancer as the reason. A colonoscopy is regularly ordered to examine the whole colon and either find or exclude the presence of any tumors. This physician failed to dor any of this.
Despite the fact that settlements usually include no with no admission of liability by defendants it is not surprising that the law firm that handled this matter reported such a substantial settlement.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting cancer cases. You can learn more about
colon cancer and other cancer cases including
breast cancer visit the website
