When cancers such as Breast Cancer, Ovarian Cancer and Lung Cancer go undiagnosed because of negligence, the survival rates for those malignancies can be dramatically reduced or unfortunately can result in a needless death of a loved one.
We at Hess & Leibowitz will be able to determine if you or a loved one is a victim of medical negligence or malpractice.
Other than lung cancer, Prostate cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among men in the United States. About 200,000 American men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year. The good news is that only a small number of tumors are very aggressive, and the majority of prostate cancers are not deadly, leading to the fact that most men who develop prostate cancer will die from something else.
After a diagnosis of prostate cancer is made, the treating doctors want to establish and determine whether the cancer is confined to the prostate gland and likely curable, or whether cancer has spread beyond the prostate and is potentially incurable. At the present state of knowledge, it is those with organ-confined disease that can be most often cured.
The PSA screening test, which simply requires a urine sample, has become both popular and controversial. Depending on who you ask, PSA screening is mandatory, or a waste of time and money that can lead to false positive diagnosis and unnecessary and life altering treatment.
The basic premise behind PSA screening is to diagnose and treat aggressive cancers before they have spread outside the prostate to distant places in the body. Most malpractice cases arise not from a failure to do a PSA test, but rather the failure to note or follow-up on a positive test. If a doctor undertakes to do PSA screening, there is an absolute duty to not only recognize that a result is elevated beyond the norm, but to also recognize an upward trend based on prior results. The purpose of screening is to sort out those patients who need a biopsy of the prostate from those who don’t, and of course, to treat those who have a positive finding of cancer.
How can you protect yourself from a failure to diagnose prostate cancer?
If you are undergoing PSA testing, make sure that you call for the results of your test, and then discuss the meaning with your doctor, Do not assume that because you haven’t heard anything that all is good- your life may be hanging in the balance. Make a digital rectal exam a part of your annual exam. Uncomfortable-you bet. Yet, a digital rectal exam may lead to a biopsy, and lifesaving treatment.
If you believe that you are the victim of cancer misdiagnosis or delay diagnosis, call one of the lawyers at Hess & Leibowitz for a free consultation. With a free consultation, and our “No-Fee Guarantee” there is no monetary risk at all to contacting us.