walkitout (walkitout) wrote,
walkitout
walkitout

she hates medical care in the US, yes, we know already

I was checking out the comments to the second entry at Tara Parker-Pope's blog at NYT, Well, on the subject of PSA testing guidelines for men of a certain age. The mix is better this time, altho there continue to be people saying, well, this was _my_ PSA test score and etc. (Altho, to be fair, one of those guys had a family history of prostate cancer -- dad -- and a couple rounds of testing before proceeding to treatment; arguably, while asymptomatic at time of treatment, he's a more plausible choice for screening than just anyone with a dick over some arbitrary age and under some other; you could say the discourse has ratcheted up a half notch or so.)

A very sensible remark by a pathologist sent me over here:

http://ethicalpathology.blogspot.com/

Where the most current entry describes a 50 year old man who came into a hospital with shortness of breath and stayed for a while. He stayed a _month_, long enough to be "seen by a hematologist, an endocrinologist, a kidney specialist, a podiatrist, two cardiologists, a cardiac electrophysiologist, an infectious-diseases specialist, a pulmonologist, an ear-nose-throat specialist, a urologist, a gastroenterologist, a neurologist, a nutritionist, a general surgeon, a thoracic surgeon and a pain specialist." and have "12 procedures, including cardiac catheterization, a pacemaker implant and a bone-marrow biopsy (to work-up chronic anemia)."

Really, the Cascade in the context of normal birth seems almost mild by comparison.

WTF? _Shortness of breath_? This is _insane_. The person commenting on this has very sensible things to say on the subject; I invite you to read. (_Podiatrist_? Did they diagnose him with diabetes or something? Grrrr.)

http://ethicalpathology.blogspot.com/2008/03/excessive-medical-testing-hits-ny-times.html
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