Man Settles With Doctors For $2,500,000 After Being Diagnosed With Metastatic Prostate Cancer

When several physicians take part in the care a patient it might be critical for

them to communicate critical diagnostic results as well as follow-up and treatment advice to the patient and other doctors. The importance of this kind of communication is not necessarily negated just because the patient does no return to one of the doctors. It gets more problematic, however, when the one doctor who is on the right track does not communicate his or her suspicions and the other physicians are missing the signs and not ordering the proper tests.

Consider the following reported lawsuit. Several doctors had an opportunity to diagnose the man's prostate cancer The man first consulted with his primary care physician (PCP), a general practitioner, with complaints of urinary problems at 56 years old age. The general practitioner concluded that the issues were not related to cancer although no testing was done to rule out cancer.

The man, on his own, visited a urologist 10 months later. The urologist conducted a physical examination of the prostate and ordered a PSA blood test. The patient then discovered that the urologist was not approved by his insurance and he went to a different urologist who was approved. While the blood test results came in neither the results of the test nor the first urologists suspicion of cancer and advice that a biopsy be conducted were communicated to the man's primary care physician or to his second urologist. The authorized urologist did not order a PSA blood test. The approved urologist also conducted a physical examination of the prostate but found no abnormalities and concluded that the patient did not have cancer.

As a result the cancer went undiagnosed for 2 years at which time it had spread outside the prostate. By that time, the cancer had spread beyond the prostate and had metastasized. Had the cancer been diagnosed when the patient first informed his doctors that he was experiencing urinary problems, when he saw the first urologist, or even when he saw the second urologist, it would not have yet spread and, with treatment, the patient would have had approximately 97% chance of surviving the cancer. Since the cancer was already advanced at the time of diagnosis, however, the patient was likely to die from the cancer in fewer than 5 years. The law firm that helped the patient documented that the resulting medical malpractice case settled for $2.5 Million.

This case therefore shows 2 main varieties of failures. There was the failure on the part of the primary care physician and the second urologist to not follow the proper screening guidelines. Additionally there was the failure of communication among the several doctors. If the patient had been able to stay with the unapproved urologist he would have known that he might have cancer and that a follow up biopsy was recommended. If the other physicians would have agreed with that recommendation or would have communicated this information to the patient if they had received it is unknown but then the error would have been entirely theirs.

by: Joseph Hernandez

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