$1.25 Million Settlement In Case Alleging Doctor Overlooked Indications Of Colon Cancer

In a number of cases colon cancers bleed. Occasionally, the blood may show up in the stool. In cases where the cancer is in the vicinity of the rectum, the blood may even surface as bright red. Regardless of whether the blood is not visible, the bleeding might be detectible in other ways. For instance, the loss of blood may show up as anemia. Blood tests may show internal loss of blood that may be the result of a tumor in the colon. The main blood test results to evaluate include the hemoglobin, hematocrit, and Mean Corpuscular Volume (MCV) levels. Low levels might signal blood loss and iron deficiency anemia. Any time someone has levels that are below normal levels for these tests doctors normally concur that there should be additional testing to discover the explanation for the blood loss, like the prospect of cancer of the colon.

Look at the case of a sixty four year old male patient whose blood tests exhibited all of the above. The subsequent year, the patients blood work found a deterioration of the patients problem. Also, a guaiac test revealed that there was blood in the patient's stool. Without any more testing, the person's physician wrote a diagnosis of hemorrhoids into the person's record. Furthermore, the individual's PSA level (a test that is used to screen males for prostate cancer) was a 10.3 (anything above a 4.0 is generally regarded as high and troubling for prostate cancer). The physician made no entry in the patient's chart to indicate an examination of the prostate gland. The physician did not relay to him about the high PSA levels and failed to refer the individual to a specialist.

Around two years after the individual was seen by another physician. Because of the individual's age this physician had him undergo a barium enema. The result: a diagnosis of advanced colon cancer. The patient died of the spread of the cancer less than three years subsequent to his diagnosis. The patient's family filed a claim against the physician who ignored the patients abnormally low blood test results and overlooked the existence of blood in the mans stool. The law firm that represented the family was able to report that it settled for $1.25 million.

Blood tests are done for a reason. Abnormal test outcomes suggest that there might be something wrong, possibly even severely wrong with the person and require follow up. At times follow up means repeating the blood test in just a brief amount of time to find out if the levels return to normal but when the levels deviate enough from normal levels or continue to worsen, doctors commonly concur that this raises the importance of ordering appropriate additional tests to find out the explanation for those levels. Physicians further normally agree that blood in the stool of an adult patient mandates immediate attention to rule out cancer of the colon as the cause. A colonoscopy is most frequently used to examine the entire colon and either find or exclude the presence of any tumors. This doctor failed to dor any of this.

Even though settlements usually include no with no admission of liability by defendants it is no surprise that the law firm that worked on this matter was able to report such a considerable settlement.

by: Joseph Hernandez

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