The wait for crucial medical test results can try a patient's patience. By Richard Saltus He had been staggered to learn that his PSA test reading was high, and then that a biopsy was positive. Next, he endured an uncomfortable half-hour MRI scan and other tests to find out if the cancer had spread. It was a long, long weekend. By Monday, he was going slightly crazy.
Doctors call it the sleepless-nights problem.
When something serious is at stake, every extra day spent waiting for test results can be agonizing. Doctors are busy, and labs get backed up. And some doctors may not be aware of how much a patient is worrying, if it hasn't been said. In the case of the patient with prostate cancer, Barry says that a week's wait for results is reasonable, especially because his doctor needed to compile data from several different tests. In part, says Barry, sleepless nights are the price we pay for the rise of screening tests, like mammograms, PSA prostate tests, and colorectal cancer tests.