While a colonoscopy is generally suggested as a screening tool for colorectal cancer for individuals who are fifty years old and older, physicians generally recognize that a patient’s complaints of rectal bleeding merit performing a colonoscopy even if the patient is younger than fifty. Even if a colonoscopy or a sigmoidoscopy is done, though, if the examination is not complete and adequate visualization was not achieved, physicians normally suggestedthat it ought to be done again. This article looks at a wrongful death matter in which both of these practices were ignored by treating doctors.

In this example, a woman complained to her doctor that she was having constipation and noticed rectal bleeding during a 5 week interval. This went on for another month. The patient 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. The gastroenterologsit could have performed a full colonoscopy but decided to only do a sigmoidoscopy as requested by the primary care physician. A sigmoidoscopy limits the portion of the colon that can be examined to only the first forty cm from the anus. Here, even that part was, according to the gastroenterologist's own notes, not well visualized. The gastroenterologist failed to advise that the test be done again in order to adequately look at the sigmoid.

Five months later, the woman again saw her primary care physician for a yearly physical. She again told the doctor that she was suffering from constipation. The subsequent year, for the third time she shared with her doctor that she was having constipation. A brief time after one visit the physician recorded that the patient’s daughter spoke to the physician about her and the physician suggested she eat more fiber for irritable bowel syndrome. The doctor also told the patient’s daughter that he would consider ordering a colonoscopy at some point in the future.

At the conclusion of the year, she once more told her doctor that she continued to experience constipation. The physician suggested she take lactulose and come back in a month. When the woman came back as suggested, the doctor noted that she exhibited tenderness in the lower left quadrant and that he could feel a structure consistent with stool in her colon. At this point, the physician ordered that her TSH level (thinking her symptoms might be thyroid related) be checked and made an entry that he thought a colonoscopy might be necessary.

Around 2 weeks later, the patient ended up in the emergency room when she experience pain and vomiting as she was prepping for a colonoscopy. The emergency room physician observed that she had a distended abdomen and hyperactive bowel sounds. She also had abdominal tenderness, mostly on the lower left. Because of these symptoms the emergency room doctor had her get. The scan revealed a mass in the sigmoid with metastasis. Two weeks later the patient underwent surgery to remove the mass which was 4.2 cm. The surgeon determined that her cancer had metastasized throughout a number of organs. She began chemotherapy for stage 4 colorectal cancer. She passed away a little over four months after her surgery.

Her family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her primary care physician and gastroenterologist. The law firm that handled the case was able to resolve the matter with a settlement in the amount of $2.0 million. The law restricts the time you have to pursue a legal claim so if a family member died of advanced cancer and you think it was due to you should consult with a lawyer without delay to determine whether you may have a valid case.