Doctor Pays Out $1.25 Million To Family Of Person Who Died After Multi Year Delay Before Detection Of Colon Cancer
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-12-27 21:30:28 | Word Count: 633
Colon cancers on occasion bleed. Occasionally, the blood might be visible in the stool. IN those circumstances in which the cancer is in the vicinity of the rectum, the blood could even appear as bright red. Regardless of whether the blood cannot be seen, it might yet be possible to discover that the individual is bleeding in other ways. For instance, the loss of blood might appear as anemia. Blood tests may uncover internal blood loss that may be caused by a tumor in the colon. Important blood test results to check include the hemoglobin, hematocrit, and Mean Corpuscular Volume (MCV) levels. Levels below the normal range may suggest blood loss and iron deficiency anemia. When a patient presents with levels that are below normal levels for these tests doctors normally concur that there ought to be follow up to find out the explanation for the blood loss, like the possibility of cancer of the colon.
Look at the case of a sixty four year old male patient whose blood tests showed all of the above. The subsequent year, the person's blood work found a deterioration of the patient's condition. Also, a guaiac test revealed the presence of blood in the patient's stool. Yet, doing no other testing, the man's doctor entered a diagnosis of hemorrhoids into the man's chart. In addition, the patient'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 generally viewed as high and troubling for prostate cancer). The doctor made no mention in the patient's record to document an examination of the prostate. The doctor failed to relay to him about the high PSA levels and did not refer him to a specialist.
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Roughly two years after the patient was seen by a different doctor. Given the individual'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 less than three years subsequent to his diagnosis. The man's family filed a case against the doctor who ignored the patient's abnormally low blood test results and ignored the existence of blood in the man's stool. The law firm that handled the case 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, maybe even seriously wrong with the patient and require follow up. At times follow up includes repeating the blood test in just a short amount of time to find out whether the levels improve. But when the levels deviate sufficiently from normal levels or keep getting worse, doctors commonly concur that this increases the importance of ordering appropriate other tests to find out the reason behind those levels. Physicians further typically concur that blood in the stool of an adult individual requires fast attention to eliminate the possibility of cancer of the colon as the reason. A colonoscopy is most frequently ordered to look at the entire 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 without any admission of liability by defendants it makes sense that the law firm that handled this case reported such a significant settlement.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting medical malpractice cases. You can learn more about
colon cancer and other cancer cases including
prostate cancer visit the website
