ado, page-22

Yep, an elderly friend of a friend just had two toes amputated because he was an undiagnosed diabetic and the test results kept coming back with false negatives even though there was clearly a circulatory problem resulting in leg ulcers.

The debacle that resulted is something to place in a file marked 'medical misadventure'. The poor thing. After being ignored and bullied by private practitioners in various specialities, he had two lots of waiting in hospital emergency for six hours at a time and then they decide to amputate, but waited a few days to do it. But meanwhile he was in colossal pain.

I'd really like to see reform in this area, so that there is a formal mechanism for doctors to get compulsory feedback and those specialists getting a clue. Instead they simply don't get one. Someone else fixes the problem. Hopefully not before it's life threatening or too late.

Relying on just test results alone is absurd yet doctors carry on as if a test result is conclusive, even though it's known to be inaccurate.

It's the Occam's Razor method of medical management. Line of least resistance. Diagnosis is something that it's far too easy to be blase about. It requires intellectual rigour. Instead we often get intellectual laziness.

The simplest explanation is probably the right one. Probably?!

The test results are probably accurate. Probably?!

That's just not good enough. I'm proud to be a holder in ADO. Change will happen incrementally but it will happen.