Male patients often possess a lack of comprehension of prostate cancer, their own chances for the cancer, and the methods available for detecting whether they have it. Many men have modest, if any, knowledge of the advantage of screening or of the guidelines for when they should commence testing, how often to screen, and the meaning of screening test results. However, far too often, doctors detect the cancer only after it is past the early stages as a consequence of a lack of screening.
Delayed diagnosis examples are all too common. One common type of medical error that forms the basis for these cases occurs when the male patient's primary care physician (1) orders a PSA blood test, (2) records abnormally raised amounts of PSA and but (3) does not tell the patient, does not refer the patient to a specialist, and does not order a biopsy to find out if the elevated PSA is a result of cancer of the prostate. Examine the following claim, for example:
In this reported claim a male patient learned he had cancer of the prostate after he followed up when informed by his internist that he most likely had cancer. The issue in this case was that the internist did not tell the patient that he could have cancer until the third year of raised PSA test results. The year prior the man's PSA level had risen to 13.6. Two years prior to that it had been at 8.0 During these years the internist did nothing to rule out prostate cancer as the cause of these elevated readings and did not tell the patient. By the time he was diagnosed he had metastatic cancer and surgery was no longer one of the treatment options. Rather the man underwent radiation therapy and hormone therapy in an effort to impede the further progression of the cancer. The law firm handling this matter reported that the lawsuit proceeded to mediation and was resolved for $600,000.
If they do nothing when the tests indicate the possibility of cancer and the individual later learns that he had prostate cancer and that the wait lead to it growing outside the prostate thereby restricting treatment options and lessening his chances of surviving the cancer, the man might be able to successfully pursue a claim against the doctor.
They should at least tell the patient that the results of the screening tests are abnormal and refer him to a specialist. Another option is to order propose diagnostic testing, such as a biopsy. As the above case shows doctors sometimes follow the guidelines by performing screening for prostate cancer but if the test results are abnormal they fail to follow through.
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