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Couple Paid Over Half A Million Dollars After Physician Holds Up Detection Of Man's Prostate Cancer
Author : Joseph Hernandez
In lawsuits concerning the delayed diagnosis of prostate cancer nearly all individuals concentrate only on whether the physician committed malpractice. Yet this is just the first issue that an attorney should consider when assessing a possible claim. Next, attorneys consider if they will be able to show causation - a legal term that refers to exhibiting that the doctor's mistake was the cause of the plaintiff's injury. Lawyers also consider whether the nature and extent of the harm is such that the claim has sufficient potential value to be worth the time and expense that will be expected to pursue the case.
The medical records normally uncover the information that was accessible to the physician, including elevated PSA test results or abnormal findings on a physical examination of the prostate. These are the two tests that are frequently employed to screen asymptomatic males for prostate cancer. Determining the delay that was due to the physician's malpractice is generally determined by checking medical records for dates when the doctor either failed to follow the screening protocols or report abnormal test results, the point at which the cancer likely started to grow, and when it was finally diagnosed.
What may be more difficult to calculate is the extent of the injury to the plaintiff. Unless the PSA is higher than at least a 10.0 (anything above a 4.0 is viewed as elevated) or a bone scan discloses the presence of metastasis, regardless of whether the cancer has a high Gleason score, the majority of doctors 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 establishes whether the cancer had already penetrated outside the prostate. Despite a PSA higher than a 10.0 it is still feasible that the cancer is still contained and that surgery can be curative.
Look at a malpractice claim where a doctor performed a PSA blood test on a man when the patient was 52 years old. The lab noted that the PSA level was normal. The patient's PSA level was retested by the same physician two years after that. This time, however, the result indicated that his PSA level had reached a 4.2. This was marked as elevated in the report provided by the lab that did the blood analysis. The doctor saw the patient four times in the course of the next 2 . 5 years but did not tell the man of the abnormal test result or performing a follow-up PSA test. The man next had his PSA tested by the same doctor three years after that abnormal reading. At this point the results showed a PSA level of 5.25. The PSA level had risen.
It was only at this point that the physician advised the patient of the prior high level. Once these results came in, the doctor referred the patient to a urologist. The urologist performed a biopsy which revealed that he had cancer. During surgery his doctors learned that the cancer had already reached beyond the prostate to the seminal vesicles and there was evidence of vascular as well as perineal invasion. Because the cancer had already began spreading beyond the prostate, the surgery lowered his PSA level but was not curative. The patient thus started hormone therapy. His PSA levels then began to climb post-operatively. This indicates a poor prognosis making it unlikely that the patient will survive five years past the surgery.
The law firm that represented the man and his family documented that the medical malpractice case on behalf of the man and his wife was settled for $550,000. The patient was 60 years old when the case settled The settlement agreement left the chance of a wrongful death case if the man does not live to the applicable statute of limitations.
As this case demonstrates, the nature of the injury to the man was not known until the results of the surgery were evaluated and confirmed that the cancer hadreached areas beyond the prostate. Furthermore it was not until the patient's PSA levels started to rise post-operatively that the true extent of the injury could be determined. At that point the attorney was in a position to be able to thoroughly 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 Obviously if there will later be a wrongful death claim that can be pursued will depend on various factors including whether the man will pass away as a result of the cancer or due to some other cause and whether it happens within the time frame permitted by the applicable statute of limitations and statute of repose.
Author's Resource Box
Joseph Hernandez is an attorney accepting cancer malpractice cases. To learn about metastatic prostate cancer and other cancer matters including breastcancer visit the websites
Article Source:
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Tags: prostate cancer, metastasized breast cancer
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Submitted : 2010-08-31 Word Count : 891 Popularity: 83