Failing to prevent ovarian cancer

October 19, 2006

A case of missed ovarian cancer with a twist. This time, lawyers claimed the patient was at high risk of ovarian cancer (so-called hereditary cancer syndrome) and physicians should have anticipated the cancer.

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{ 2 comments }

1 Anonymous October 19, 2006 at 3:12 pm

Sounds similar to a case I heard on TV today. Some kid tried to ride on a car while it was moving. The idiot fell off the car and was paralyzed. The parents hired a sodomite to sue the school system, trying to say the school should have taught him it’s dangerous to ride on a car. Only in America!

2 Gasman October 19, 2006 at 4:38 pm

There are heriditary conditions where aggressive monitoring and even prophylactic surgery are indicated. These are well established by the medical benefit and were not created by the legal system. The medical system is fully capable of determining, with the patient’s consent of course, rational prospective care.

A few diseases that prompt generational followup include retinoblastoma, Multiple Endocrine Neoplasias, colonic polyposis, and long QT syndromes. The legal system cannot claim to have created or promulgated the practices for any of these.

Ultimately when does it become the patient’s responsiblity to seek an answer to an obveous question: if everyone in your family is dropping dead of a particular disease is there anything to be done before dropping dead?

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