SHOULD I BE TESTED FOR CANCER?
MAYBE NOT AND HERE'S WHY
Chapter One
You may have a "cancer scare"
and face an endless cycle of testing
In our society, information gathering is viewed almost uniformly as a good
thing. (It is the "information age," after all.) Nowhere is this more true
than in medicine. For doctors, more information is always better. In the
past, most of our information came from the patient. Now it increasingly
comes from machines.
Doctors like tests because we see them as objective and more reliable
than our own subjective judgments. We also see tests as something tangible
we can offer the patient at the end of a clinic visit. Patients like tests
for the same reasons. Ordering a test validates their concerns and promises
concrete information-a definitive diagnosis. Sometimes patients
even perceive their care as substandard if they are not given some sort of
test. While doctors and patients recognize that treatments may have side
effects or lead to complications, both tend to view testing as something
that can only help. The p ... read full excerpt from Should I Be Tested for Cancer?: Maybe Not and Here's Why ebook
