Family And Doctors Reach Settlement For Death Of Forty Six Year Old Woman
Though a colonoscopy is normally recommended as a screening tool for colorectal cancer for individuals who are fifty years old and older, doctors usually recognize that reports of rectal bleeding by a patient merit performing a colonoscopy even if the patient is younger than fifty. Regardless of whether a colonoscopy or a sigmoidoscopy is performed, though, if the examination is not complete and adequate visualization was not achieved, doctors normally recommendedthat the procedure should be done again. This article considers a wrongful death matter in which these two practices were dismissed by treating doctors.
In this example, a woman complained to her doctor that she was having constipation and observed rectal bleeding throughout a five week interval. This continued for another month. She was forty six years old at the time. Now the primary care physician scheduled her for a consultation with a gastroenterologist to do a sigmoidoscopy to check for the reason for the bleeding and constipation. But, the gastroenterologist only did a sigmoidoscopy rather than a colonoscopy. A sigmoidoscopy merely lets the physician examine up to 40 cm from the anus. While the sigmoidoscopy only permits examination of a limited section of the colon, the doctor documented that the sigmoidoscopy was not finished and that it had not been possible to examine the full length even of the sigmoid. Despite the poor visualization, the gastroenterologist failed to suggest that the procedure be repeated so as to properly examine the sigmoid.
The woman saw her physician for 2 yearly physicals after that and each time told him that she kept experiencing problems with constipation. At one point the physician spoke with the patient’s daughter and although he told her he would give some thought to a colonoscopy at some point in the future he proposed that the patient was suffering from irritable bowel syndrome and simply should eat more fiber. Later on he told the patient to begin taking lactulose. Ultimately, when a physical examination showed abdominal tenderness and a structure suspicious for stool in the colon, the physician ordered a check of her thyroid and at last referred her for a colonoscopy.