When it comes to certain cancers such as colon cancer there are well-defined recommendations and guidelines for the tests to conduct if an individual has certain symptoms. In the event that a doctor does not comply with these recommendations and the person does have cancer which ultimately ends up metastasizing from the resulting holdup in detecting the cancer, that doctor risks a lawsuit. To illustrate such a scenario consider the following published lawsuit.
When the patient in this matter first commenced treating with his primary care physician the doctor did a general physical examination and documented his findings of both internal and external hemorrhoids. The doctor noted that the individual had bleeding from the rectum occasionally. The doctor did not do any more testing to check for the presence of blood in the man's stool or to determine the source of the bleeding. Furthermore, despite the fact that the individual was fifty years old at the time, the physician did not send the man for a sigmoidoscopy or a colonoscopy in order to screen for colon cancer.
After 2 years, having experienced several days of abdominal pain the patient was seen in the urgent care department at his physician's office. The man was examined by a nurse who marked in his record that she detected occult blood in the man's stool during a guiaic test. When the individual returned to check in with the doctor for the results of the examination however the doctor failed to take any action with respect to the positive finding of blood in the stool. The physician did though recommend that the individual have a screening sigmoidoscopy and referred him to a gastroenterologist. The gastroenterologist did the sigmoidoscopy as requested by the doctor rather than a full colonoscopy. The gastroenterologist only checked up to 35 cm and recorded only the presence of hemorrhoids none of which were bleeding. The gastroenterologist did not determine the source for the prior finding of blood in the stool.
On a visit to the internist 2 years later the man complained of bloating of the abdomen. During the physical examination of the man, the physician could detect an a mass on the liver and had the patient get a CT scan. The CT scan showed large masses both in the liver and also the colon:. At this point the internist at last sent the patient for a colonoscopy which established the presence of colon cancer. By then however, the patient had stage IV colon cancer which had progressed to such a degree that surgery was no longer an option. The individual commenced treating with chemotherapy yet passed away just over a year following his diagnosis.
The man's family pursued a lawsuit against the two physicians. The law firm that represented the family reported that they were able to obtain a settlement in the amounts of $1.5 million for the man's family.
This lawsuit demonstrates why it is so important to do proper tests for symptoms that suggest the possibility of colon cancer. In particular if a patient has blood in the stool doctors generally recognize that a colonoscopy rather than sigmoidoscopy should be done to rule out cancer. By doing only a sigmoidoscopy in this matter the doctors were unable to check the full length of the patient's colon and hence inappropriately eliminated colon cancer as a possible source for the blood. This led to a 2 year delay in the detection of the patient's cancer. The law firm that handled this case on behalf of the man's family no doubt had medical experts able to offer testimony that had this delay not happened the individual's cancer would not have metastasized and the man would have survived after treatment.
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