Doctors Settles Lawsuit Claiming It Took The Doctors Years To Detect Man's Prostate Cancer
Once a number of physicians become involved in the treatment of a patient it can become vital for them to communicate important diagnostic results as well as follow-up and treatment advice to the patient and to the other doctors. Many people believe that the physician will contact them if there are any important results from testing ordered by the doctor. When people do not receive a follow up communication from a physician many take that as a sign that everything is fine and that there is no need for them to follow up with the physician. A failure to do so may be responsible for an undiagnosed or untreated disease or condition. And it may be medical negligence.
One such situation arose in the following reported case. A number of doctors had a chance to diagnose the man's prostate cancer before it spread A male patient visited his family physician complaining of urinary problems. He was fifty-six at the time. The family doctor thought that the patient's problems were not because of cancer. As such, the physician failed to order any diagnostic testing, such as a biopsy and did not refer the patient to a urologist.
The patient, on his own, went to a urologist ten months later. The urologist carried out a physical examination of the prostate and ordered a PSA blood test. The patient then found out that this urologist did not practice in the patient's insurance network and so the patient consulted with a different urologist. Even though the blood test results came in neither the results of the test nor the first urologist