Recently on this blog, we discussed the difficulty of diagnosing colon cancer and the problems that can ensue from rushing the colonoscopy procedure.
A lawsuit over just such a missed diagnosis due to a hastily-performed procedure has been settled between the Endoscopy Center in Nevada, one of its doctors and a former patient who now is unlikely to survive the next five years. From the article:
Kevin Rexford, a 46-year-old pharmacist, said Dr. Clifford Carrol, one of the clinic’s owners, missed a obvious colon cancer diagnosis three years ago. The alleged failure allowed the cancer to spread throughout his body and he now has only about a 10 percent chance of living five more years. Rexford is married with two young children….Experts who were paid to review the case on Rexford’s behalf said Carrol took only three minutes – half the minimum recommended time – to examine Rexford’s colon for cancer during a Jan. 28, 2005, procedure. His missed diagnosis allowed the cancer to progress to an incurable stage, the experts said.
The consequences of such haste are clearly severe and patients should be aware of the risks, as we said in our earlier post.
The Endoscopy Center has also been in the news recently because it was shut down earlier this month because it was linked to six cases of hepatitis C.