Re:Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer
by jacquesm on Thursday April 25, 2013 @01:03PM
(#5608376)
I'm all for doctors informing their patients and for a proper dialogue. Obviously it is a lot simpler to be treated for a broken arm or a gallbladder infection than for something as invasive as cancer or something that is hard to diagnose.
Screening (especially um-necessary screening) is doing more harm than good. But who to screen and who not to screen is still a specialist decision and depending on your locality more or less care will go into the making of that decision. Categorically rejecting screening before you're 50 if you're in a risk group is not smart (not saying the OP's better half is, but these things tend to be complex).
The doctor-patient dialogue is a tricky affair and I think that somewhere along the line doctors lost the ability to clearly communicate with patients about their treatments and the necessity thereof. On top of that doctors now see so many patients that there simply isn't time enough to have a proper conversation with every patient.
Those things are the crux of the problem here, not that doctors are out to make money of unsuspecting citizens or that they would perform procedures or generate referrals because there is money in it. Though I'm sure that occurs the Hippocratic oath is still very much a part of medical education.
> See, for example, knee arthroscopy which was found after controlled studies with sham operations to be no more effective than the sham for many people.
I noticed a 'many' in that sentence, that's a bit of wiggle room there, if it were a really ineffective treatment there would be an 'all' in there. So now the question becomes one of degree and how to tell the people for whom that treatment is effective from the ones for whom it isn't.
On another note, the communications problem in part stems from the vast body of knowledge in modern medicine, two specialists already have a hard time communicating their ideas to one another, a doctor explaining the intricacies of some treatment to a patient would have to be at least as good an educator as a doctor, however education is typically not their specialism.
Screening (especially um-necessary screening) is doing more harm than good. But who to screen and who not to screen is still a specialist decision and depending on your locality more or less care will go into the making of that decision. Categorically rejecting screening before you're 50 if you're in a risk group is not smart (not saying the OP's better half is, but these things tend to be complex).
The doctor-patient dialogue is a tricky affair and I think that somewhere along the line doctors lost the ability to clearly communicate with patients about their treatments and the necessity thereof. On top of that doctors now see so many patients that there simply isn't time enough to have a proper conversation with every patient.
Those things are the crux of the problem here, not that doctors are out to make money of unsuspecting citizens or that they would perform procedures or generate referrals because there is money in it. Though I'm sure that occurs the Hippocratic oath is still very much a part of medical education.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath
> See, for example, knee arthroscopy which was found after controlled studies with sham operations to be no more effective than the sham for many people.
I noticed a 'many' in that sentence, that's a bit of wiggle room there, if it were a really ineffective treatment there would be an 'all' in there. So now the question becomes one of degree and how to tell the people for whom that treatment is effective from the ones for whom it isn't.
On another note, the communications problem in part stems from the vast body of knowledge in modern medicine, two specialists already have a hard time communicating their ideas to one another, a doctor explaining the intricacies of some treatment to a patient would have to be at least as good an educator as a doctor, however education is typically not their specialism.