Doctor – Recommend Watchful Waiting And Risk A Malpractice Claim
An elevated or quickly rising PSA might indicate that a man has prostate cancer. Physicians therefore normally advocate that a patient with an elevated or rapidly rising PSA have a biopsy. There are, however, two main difficulties with a biopsy. First a biopsy samples just a portion of the prostate. It is thus possible that the a biopsy might yield a false negative and not catch the cancer. Second, biopsies pose dangers, like the possibility of infection and the threat of severe bleeding.
Given of these two factors a number of physicians to recommend that men who have an elevated PSA pursue a program of “watchful waiting.” This is an approach where the physician routinely checks the patient’s elevated PSA for months or years. During this time certain doctors suggest that the individual try non cancer related therapies, for instance, for infection, based on the possibility that if the PSA is elevatedhigh because of an underlying reason besides prostate cancer such treatments may bring the PSA back to normal levels.
The problem is that the physician could wait too long before advising that the patient have a biopsy. The more time that goes by while the PSA increases the probability increases that the rising levels are due to prostate cancer, as does the likelihood that the cancer will progress outside of the capsule leading to a finding of stage 4 prostate cancer.
If a doctor, by suggesting that the individual delay instead of promptly doing diagnostic testing, is responsible for a situation in which the cancer progresses and gets to an advanced stage, a cancer lawyer can help you determine whether you be able to successfully pursue medical malpractice claim against that doctor.
When the cancer is not diagnosed until the late stages, once it has grown outside the prostate, there is at the current time no known cure. How many of the men who will die this year from metastatic prostate cancer could have survived if their doctor had tested them instead of advising “watchful waiting”?
The above is only general information that is commonly obtainable and is meant for basic educational purposes only. The above is not medical advice. Talk to with a doctor if you have any health related concerns and before taking any medical advice. The above is also not legal advice. Consult with an attorney concerning any possible legal issues.