Were You Diagnosed With Late Stage Cancer After Your Doctor Did Not Inform You Of Abnormal Test Results

Imagine you are a man and you see your doctor for your yearly checkup. Imagine the doctor orders blood tests, including a PSA test which is used for the early detection of prostate cancer. This is how to determine if a man without any symptoms of prostate cancer may in fact have it. Imagine the results actually were not normal.

However, there remains debate among some doctors over how to screen asymptomatic male patients for prostate cancer or whether to screen at all. These doctors hold that screening has little, if any, value. One factor, nevertheless, remains constant. If the result of a screening test is abnormal the patient needs to be told about the results and either be referred to a specialist or be advised about the option for diagnostic testing, for example a biopsy. Again, however, a number of physicians also believe that, at least under certain instances, a man diagnosed with prostate cancer does not need to treat it right away and simply should carefully monitor the cancer.

Should this happen, the cancer becomes incurable before the patient turns symptomatic and is finally diagnosed. However, if a physician detected that the patient’s prostate was enlarged or there was a nodule on the gland and the PSA test results showed abnormally high levels of the antigen and the doctor did not inform the man about the abnormal results, the individual would in all likelihood think that meant there was no need to follow up.

The longer the delay in finally performing tests that will diagnose the cancer the greater the likelihood that by the time it is eventually diagnosed the cancer will have attained an advanced stage. This will significantly cut down treatment options, will eliminate the likelihood of a cure, and will cut short the patient’s life. There is a type of cases in which the man was ultimately diagnosed yet by that time the cancer was metastatic and a cure was no longer plausible.

Screening tests may have false positives. This means that certain patients with abnormal screening results actually do not have cancer. Yet doing screening tests for cancer is meaningless if there is no follow up as it gives the patient an incorrect sense of security believing he has no cancer as the doctor tested him and did not tell him that the tests revealed he might have cancer. Doctors generally agree the need for follow up when the results of screening tests come back as abnormal.

By: J. Hernandez

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Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting medical malpractice matters. To learn more about prostate cancer metastasis claims and other cancer matters including breast cancer cases visit the websites