$1.25 Million Settlement In Lawsuit Alleging Doctor Missed Patient's Indications Of Colon Cancer

There are times when colon cancers bleed. In certain cases, the blood might be visible in the stool. When the cancer is near the rectum, the blood may even surface as bright red. Regardless of whether the blood cannot be seen, it may nonetheless be possible to determine that the patient is bleeding in other ways. For example, the loss of blood may manifest as anemia. Blood tests may reveal internal loss of blood that could be the result of cancer in the colon. The key blood test results to check include the hemoglobin, hematocrit, and Mean Corpuscular Volume (MCV) levels. Levels below the normal range might reveal blood loss and iron deficiency anemia. When someone is found to have levels that are below normal levels for these tests physicians commonly concur that there should be follow up to find out the reason for the blood loss, like the chance of cancer of the colon.

Consider the matter of a sixty four year old man whose blood tests revealed all of the above. The subsequent year, the patient's blood work revealed a worsening of the patient's condition. Furthermore, the man's stools were discovered to be positive for blood. Without any further testing, the man's physician added a diagnosis of hemorrhoids into the man's chart. Additionally, the person's PSA level (a test that is used to screen males for prostate cancer) was a 10.3 (anything above a 4.0 is normally regarded as high and worrisome for prostate cancer). The physician did not put any report in the man's record to document an examination of the gland. The physician failed to relay to him about the high PSA levels and failed to refer the person to a specialist.

Roughly 2 years after the individual was seen by another doctor. Given the man's age this doctor had him undergo a barium enema. The result: a diagnosis of advanced colon cancer. The individual died of metastatic colon cancer not even three years following his diagnosis. The person's family initiated a claim against the physician who overlooked 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 case reported a settlement in the case in the amount of $1,250,000

Blood tests are done for a reason. Abnormal test results suggest that there might be something wrong, maybe dangerously wrong with the person and require follow up. At times follow up includes repeating the blood test within a short period of time to determine whether the levels return to normal but when the levels deviate sufficiently from normal levels or continue to worsen, physicians typically acknowledge that this raises the importance of ordering proper other tests to determine the reason behind those levels. Physicians further typically consent that blood in the stool of an adult person calls for fast attention to rule out cancer of the colon as the cause. A colonoscopy is most frequently ordered to look at the whole colon and either locate or exclude the existence of any tumors. This doctor did not do any of this.

by: Joseph Hernandez

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