What Is Involved In A Prostate Cancer Legal Matter

When individuals call attorneys with regards to a cancer lawsuit, people virtually always wish to begin by talking about what the physician did wrong. However this is merely one issue that an attorney must consider when assessing a potential case. There are 2 additional issues that lawyers consider. First, did the physician's error cause harm to the patient. Second, is the injury enough that it makes sense economically to pursue a lawsuit.

Consider a case where a physician performed a PSA blood test on a male patient when the patient was 52 years old. The lab reported that the PSA level was normal. The patient's PSA level was retested by the same doctor 2 years after that. This time, however, the result indicated that his PSA level had reached a 4.2. This was noted as high in the record supplied by the lab that carried out the blood analysis. The doctor followed the man four times over the next 2 . 5 years without ever informing the man of the abnormal test result or performing a follow-up PSA test. The patient next had his PSA tested by the same doctor three years after that abnormal reading. At this point the results indicated a PSA level of 5.25. The PSA level had gone up.

This was the first time the physician told the patient of the previously elevated level. At this time, the doctor sent the man to a urologist. A biopsy showed that the man had cancer. During surgery his doctors discovered that the cancer had already spread to the seminal vesicles and there was evidence of vascular and perineal invasion. Since the cancer had by then started growing outsid the prostate, the surgery was not curative. The patient therefore started hormone therapy. His PSA levels then began to go up post-operatively. This indicates a poor prognosis so that it is improbable that the patient will live 5 years after the surgery.

The law firm that handled this case documented that the medical malpractice case on behalf of the man and his wife was settled for $550,000. The man was 60 when the claim settled The agreement left the chance of a wrongful death lawsuit if the man does not live to the pertinent statute of limitations.

As this case demonstrates, the full degree of the harm to the man was not known until the results of the surgery were evaluated and showed that the cancer had, in fact, already begun spreading outside the prostate. Plus it was not until the patient’s PSA levels began to climb post-operatively that the full extent of the injury was know. At that point the attorney was in a position to be able to thoroughly evaluate the patient’s claim. An important teaching point from this case is how the law firm made sure that the man's wife did not lose the right to pursue a wrongful death claim if her husband died of the cancer within the time frame allowed by the Statute of Limitations Obviously if there will later be a wrongful death claim that may be pursued is determined by several factors such as whether the patient will pass away as a result of the cancer or due to a different cause and if this occurs during the time frame permitted by the applicable statute of limitations and statute of repose.

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