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medpundit |
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Monday, July 15, 2002Technically, I suppose that’s true, if the appendix isn’t inflamed at the time of surgery, then it wasn’t appendicitis. But, using the term “misdiagnosed” implies that a mistake was made on the part of the surgeon, which isn’t necessarily so. Medical diagnosis is akin to solving a mystery. The doctor has to sort through the signs and symptoms and make a best guess as to their source. Sometimes, it’s easy to confirm, sometimes it isn’t. Pneumonia, for example, can be confirmed easily with a chest x-ray. There is no easy confirmation test for appendicitis, short of surgery. To make it more difficult, complications, including death, go up dramatically in appendicitis that has gone untreated for twenty four hours. Surgeons don’t have the luxury of waiting and observing to “see how things go” before operating. The study in question says that an estimated $741.5 million dollars are spent on people who were thought to have appendicitis and didn’t. What the study doesn’t tell us is how many lives are saved by our current approach to appendicitis. Perfection in this case is impossible. As one doctor interviewed for the story pointed out: Williams also suggested that it's unrealistic and risky to strive for eliminating surgeries on normal appendixes. Doing so would mean subjecting all patients with appendicitis-like symptoms to longer observation times and hospital stays, and could mean more ruptured appendixes and even deaths, Williams said. posted by Sydney on 7/15/2002 07:28:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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