Men Tips

posted by jhernandezlawoffice on Feb 2

When multiple physicians become involved in the treatment of a patient can be very important for them to relay critical diagnostic and recommended follow-up and treatment recommendation to the patient and to the other physicians. The importance of such communication is not negated simply because the patient does no return to one of the physician. A failure to do so may lead to an undiagnosed or untreated disease or condition. And it may constitute medical malpractice.

One such situation arose in the following case: Several doctors had an opportunity to diagnose their male patient’s prostate cancer while it was in its early stages. The patient first saw his primary care physician, a general practitioner, with urinary problems when he was 56 years old. The general practitioner concluded that the problems were not related to cancer although no testing was done to rule out cancer. Ten months later the patient consulted with a urologist who performed a digital examination on the prostate gland and ordered a PSA blood test. As it turned out this urologist was not an approved provider under the patient’s insurance and so the patient consulted with a second urologist.

The approved urologist also conducted a physical examination of the prostate but did not find any abnormalities and so concluded that the patient did not have cancer. The approved urologist did not order a PSA blood test. The one ordered by the first urologist came back and that urologist recommended a biopsy. Unfortunately, that recommended did not get communicated to the family doctor or the urologist approved by the insurance company.

As such the cancer went undiagnosed for two years at which time it had spread beyond the prostate. The physicians treating the patient’s cancer concluded that he likely had only one to five years to life as a result of the cancer’s spread. The law firm that handled this matter reported that they were able to achieve a settlement during jury selection at trial in the amount of $2,500,000 on behalf of the patient.

Here, neither the general practitioner nor the approved urologist ordered a PSA test to screen the patient for prostate cancer. An abnormally high result would have suggested the possibility of cancer. The general practitioner also failed to perform a digital examination to determine whether there was any palpable abnormality to the prostate gland. The second urologist conducted a digital examination but failed to pick up any abnormality of the gland. The second urologist thus relied on only one test - a test that is unreliable for two main reasons. First, the digital examination only allows access to part of the prostate. If there is an abnormality to the part of the gland that cannot be reached during the examination the abnormality will not be found. Second, the digital examination is only as good as the sensitivity of the physician conducting it to detect an abnormality.

As per the case, seeing multiple physicians can lead to multiple errors. The first was the general practitioner and the approved urologist not following the screening guidelines. The other was a communication error when the findings, suspicions, and recommendations of the urologist unapproved by the insurance company was not communicated to the patient or the other urologist. If the patient had been able to keep seeing the unapproved urologist the patient would have known that cancer was a possibility and that a follow up biopsy was in order. The result: multiple physicians consulted yet the diagnosis of prostate cancer delayed followed by a lawsuit.

Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting medical malpractice cases. To learn more about advanced prostate cancer and how a cancer lawyer can help you please visit his website

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