Prostate Cancer Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Results In Settlement In Excess Of $500,000
When individuals contact attorneys about a cancer claim, people practically every time want to commence by speaking about what the physician did wrong. Taking a look at whether to represent a plaintiff with a lawsuit, though, this is merely one of the issues that lawyers weigh. There are 2 other factors that lawyers take into account. First, did the doctor's error cause harm to the plaintiff. Second, is the harm enough that it justifies the economics of taking on the case.
Look at a lawsuit where a doctor ordered a PSA blood test on a man when the patient was 52 years old. The PSA level was 2.0 at that time. This level is typically regarded to be normal. Two years after the doctor repeated a PSA test for the man. This time, though, the result showed that his PSA level had reached a 4.2. This was marked as elevated in the document provided by the lab that did the blood analysis. The patient went to this doctor 4 more times in the two and a half years which followed. His doctor failed to tell him that the PSA level had been high and did not do more PSA testing during that time. It was over three years after the abnormal test result before the physician eventually performed a follow-up PSA test. At this point the results showed a PSA level of 5.25. It had risen.
It was only at this point that the doctor informed the patient of the previously elevated level. At this time, the physician sent the man to a urologist. A biopsy showed that the patient had cancer. Surgery disclosed that the cancer had already reached beyond the prostate to the seminal vesicles and there was also vascular and perineal invasion. Because the cancer had by then started spreading beyond the prostate, the surgery lowered his PSA level but was not able to take out all the cancer. The man thus underwent hormone therapy. His PSA levels then began to go up post-operatively. This suggests a poor prognosis making it unlikely that the patient will survive 5 years past the surgery.
The law firm that handled this case reported that the claim settled in the amout of $550,000 The man was 60 years old at the time of the settlement. The settlement agreement left the chance of a wrongful death case should the patient not survive beyond the applicable statute of limitations.
As this lawsuit illustrates, the full degree of the harm to the patient was not known until the results of the surgery were examined and showed that the cancer had, in fact, already begun spreading beyond the prostate. Furthermore it was not until the patient