Just To Be Sure: The Most Expensive Phrase In Medicine
Kevin, MD linked to this, and I really must comment.
Here’s the abstract, and I hope you’ll read it all:
For years I’ve heard friends describe experiences of being caught in a web of excessive and unnecessary medical testing. Their doctors ordered test Z to investigate a seemingly incidental finding on test Y, which had come about because of a borderline abnormality on test X.
I often wondered why test X was done in the first place. As a primary care physician, I would have treated them for the likely diagnosis and done diagnostic tests — especially a series of diagnostic tests — only if they didn’t respond as expected…. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*