How A Doctor Could Be Responsible For Delay In Diagnosing Prostate Cancer Until It Spreads

Consider that your doctor physically examines your prostate gland for any signs of possible cancer

, such as an enlargement or a hardening of the prostate and whether there are any growths present on the gland. Imagine the physician orders blood tests, including a PSA test for the early diagnosis of prostate cancer. This is how to determine whether a male without any symptoms of prostate cancer might actually have it. Imagine the tests came back outside the normal range

However, some physicians do not advise men who are asymtomatic to screen for prostate cancer. They argue that screening has little, if any, value. If the result of a screening test is abnormal the patient should be informed of the results and either be referred to a specialist or be advised about the option for diagnostic testing, for example a biopsy. Once more, however, some physicians also believe that, at least under certain instances, a male patient diagnosed with prostate cancer does not have to treat it right away and merely has to carefully monitor the cancer.

Should this happen, the cancer becomes incurable before the patient turns symptomatic and is finally diagnosed. Unfortunately, if a physician detected that the patients prostate was enlarged or there was a nodule on the gland and the PSA test results showed abnormally high levels of the antigen and the doctor failed to inform the patient about the abnormal results, the man would probably assume that meant the results were all normal.

If the patient does actually have cancer, not telling the patient that he might have cancer will lead to a delay in his diagnosis.

A delay may, in turn, allow the cancer to reach an advanced stage. Once a cancer metastasizes treatment can at best lessen the pace of the continuing growth of the cancer and reduce the effects (like pain) of the cancer. There are lawsuits where a physician did screen a man and the test results were abnormal but the physician did not tell the patient and did not follow up.

Screening tests can yield false positives. This means that some patients with abnormal screening results will not have cancer. Yet doing screening tests for cancer is meaningless if there is no follow up as it gives the patient a false sense of security believing that he has no cancer as the physician tested him and did not inform him that the screening tests revealed he might have cancer. Physicians typically acknowledge that there is a need for follow up when the results of screening tests come back as abnormal.

by: Joseph Hernandez

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