A retired Victorian doctor has been stripped of his registration following the death of a patient whose cancer diagnosis was significantly delayed.
Kadandalea Shetty was a longtime general practitioner when his patient, an unidentified man, came to him in January 2020 complaining about back and leg pain.
His pain got progressively worse over the next few months and radiated to his hip and thigh, with Mr Shetty failing to check whether the man had any "red flag" symptoms despite 10 consultations.
The doctor gave the patient six steroid injections in the space of nine months to relieve his pain, contrary to the accepted interval between injections of no less than three months.
Mr Shetty failed to refer the patient for a CT scan until September 2020.
He also failed to refer the man to a specialist oncology service despite several test results, the man's significant weight loss and worsening pain suggesting he likely had cancer.
It wasn't until the patient consulted Mr Shetty's colleague that he was immediately referred to an oncologist in November 2020.
He was subsequently diagnosed with stage four cancer and died in February 2021, about two months later.
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, in a published decision, said nobody would ever know if an earlier diagnosis would have changed the man's prognosis or life expectancy.
However, it would have at least improved his quality of life given he would have received better care, and his diagnosis was "significantly and unjustifiably delayed".
The delayed diagnosis meant the patient likely didn't have time to put his affairs in order and his family wasn't aware of his cancer until he was seriously unwell, tribunal members said.
"Dr Shetty’s repeated failures in providing appropriate treatment to (the patient) are in retrospect glaring and were glaring at the time they were made," the members said.
"How can a medical practitioner ignore all standards of appropriate treatment including (the patient's) constant reporting of his symptoms, inadequate medical examination, red flags (missed) and test results ignored?"
The tribunal found Mr Shetty engaged in professional misconduct in his dealings with the man, as well as in his treatment of another female patient who in 2020 suspected she had hemorrhoids.
The doctor told the patient to lie on her side facing the wall on his examination table and without warning pulled her pants down and inserted his finger into her anus.
The woman screamed out in pain and bled for several days.
The examination amounted to professional misconduct as Mr Shetty failed to get the woman's informed consent, the tribunal found.
The tribunal cancelled Mr Shetty's registration as a medical practitioner but did not ban him from reapplying for a specified time period given the doctor had already retired.
