Man Finds He Has Metastatic Prostate Cancer After 5 Years Of Symptoms And Abnormal Tests
Prostate cancer is a frightening disease. While not 100% accurate doctors use diagnostics tests to doctors to establish whether a patient has the cancer. But with the prospect of false negatives (a negative test outcome despite the fact that the patient actually has cancer) physicians must follow up and redo tests as appropriate when patient symptoms and screening tests keep showing the possibility of cancer. Not doing so might give rise to a lawsuit for medical malpractice.
In one documented lawsuit a man communcated to his family physician that he was having urinary frequency and burning. The doctor began him on antibiotics and refered the patient to a urologist. The urologist performed a cystoscopy which found that the individual had an enlarged prostate. The urologist additionally ordered a PSA blood test which registered a 16.3 (a result above a 4.0 is typically thought to be high). Consequently the urologist took a biopsy two months later. The biopsy was read by a pathologist as exhibiting no evidence of cancer.
The subsequent year the individual returned to the urologist. On this occasion the PSA blood test came back a 2.9 (ordinarily regarded as in normal range). The urologist diagnosed the patient with BPH (a benign enlargement of the prostate). Three months later the individual went to the PCP for fever and nocturia (having to urinate during the night). The physician put him again on antibiotics. A follow up urine culture registered negative. The PCP hence referred the man to the urologist. The urologist ordered a PSA test which registered a 6.4 (again, high).
A biopsy analyzes samples of the prostate. Hence, a biopsy may miss the cancer. However, the urologist decided to use the previous year