Doctor Agrees To $875,000 Settlement For Neglecting to Tell Woman Of Unfinished And Unreliable Colon Cancer Test Results

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Particular men and women are vulnerable to having or developing particular forms of cancer. With colon cancer, as an illustration, people with particular conditions (such as chron's disease), with particular symptoms (such as blood in the stool), or with a family history are at risk. If an individual both has a family history and in addition has complaints of symptoms for example blood in the stool, doctors generally agree that a colonoscopy is required in order to find out if the individual has colon cancer or exclude it. Besides testing men and women who are at a higher risk level, doctors also generally advocate that asymptomatic patients who are fifty or older go through routine screening in order to find any cancer that might be growing in the colon before it reaches an advanced stage.

If the doctor performing the colonoscopy cannot examine the total length of the colon it is possible that there could be cancer present in the unvisualized areas. One of the reasons why a physician might not finish the colonoscopy is poor prior preparation which makes visualization difficult or the presence of an obstruction which makes it impossible to pass the scope beyond the location of the obstruction. When circumstances such as these occur the doctor ought to inform the patient and suggest that the person either have an alternative procedure or a repeat colonoscopy. In the event that the physician does not let the patient know that the colonoscopy was no finished or that there was poor visibility and suggest proper follow up too much time might pass before the patient begins to show symptoms or has another screening procedure.

This is what happened in one documented claim involving a fifty-four year old female who passed away from metastatic colon cancer. Consider her medical history. The woman had a family history of colon cancer. Throughout the length of six years, physicians performed 3 colonospies on her. During that period, the woman reported that she observed rectal bleeding and abdominal pain frequently. At least once her blood work further indicated that she was anemic. All three are potential symptoms of colon cancer.

In this case, the doctor who carried out the colonoscopies in fact recorded, with respect to 2 of them, that visualization was incomplete in both the ascending colon and the cecum. The doctor further recorded that this was the situation because there was a problem in passing the scope past the transverse colon. Sill, the doctor who carried out the 3 colonoscopies and followed the patient during this time continued telling the woman that her problems were attributable to hemorrhoids.

Ultimately the patient had exploratory surgery in an attempt to discover the reason why she was experiencing the symptoms. The cancer was discovered during the surgery. The cancer had grown and spread so far that she needed to have a large section of her intestines extracted and then had to undergo chemotherapy. Regrettably, even with treatment she passed away from the cancer. Her family pursued a wrongful death lawsuit against the physician for the failure to detect her cancer and to inform her that the results of the colonoscopies were inconclusive. The law firm that hekped the family in this case was able to report that they were able to obtain a recovery for the family in the sum of 5,000

Doctors use diagnostic tests to find or rule out particular diseases such as certain types of cancers. For example, the colonoscopy is a procedure used to locate or rule out colon cancer yet the result of the test is only as good as the reliability with which the test was conducted. For the procedure a doctor inserts a scope to see the inside of the colon to ascertain if there are any polyps or tumors in the colon

If the whole colon is not visualized, as in the case above, a physician cannot rely on it to exclude cancer. Doing so makes about as much sense as only listening to one of your lungs, examining only one of your eyes, or ordering only part of a complete blood count. In the event that the patient does have cancer this might result in a delay in diagnosis that gives the cancer time to grow and progress to an incurable stage. Under such circumstances the doctor who relied on such an incomplete procedure may be liable under a medical malpractice or even wrongful death claim.



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