Parris

Plaintiff Paula Parris appeals a judgment, after jury trial, in favor of defendant Doctor James Sands. We affirm and hold Doctor Sands had no duty to inform patient Parris of “schools of thought” regarding asplenic patients and prophylactic antibiotics.

Facts

In 1975, physicians diagnosed plaintiff Paula Parris as having Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes. To determine whether the disease had spread to other parts of her body, surgeons removed her spleen, a body organ with critical immunological functions. Thereafter, her physicians treated her with radiation therapy. In 1980, the cancer reoccurred and Parris received chemotherapy treatments. Since then, her cancer has been in remission.

From time to time following her splenectomy, Parris suffered from upper respiratory infections. Her oncologist, Doctor Robert Ouwendijk, prescribed antibiotics for these respiratory infections on three occasions. On three other occasions, he did not. Based upon his medical tests and Parris’s clinical profile, he opined that she probably was not immunocompromised due to her splenectomy. Doctor Ouwendijk believed, however, that “best” clinical judgment required a physician to…