Second Opinion Is Not Enough In Medical Cases

What Is A Second Opinion?

Just asking another specialist in the same medical field before making a critical decision? Is this enough?

Why not ask for a third opinion? Your life or your future well being or your remaining life expectancy may depend on it. Don’t hesitate!

Common Sense Falls Short

Physicians are so specialised that they either do not know or they ignore what is going on in neighboring disciplines/specialties although it might be very relevant to your medical condition.

Second, a physician of one field will usually hesitate to advise on other medical fields not least to avoid future liabilities or reprimands from his own profession. This is a serious shortcoming of our medical profession!

Beyond Second Opinion

It appears to be highly recommendable to instruct doctors what procedures you want to have done before any major treatment where the patient may be incapacitated to decide.

Do Your Homework!

With the Internet today, there is no excuse not to do a comprehensive research about your medical condition.

Be prepared for your next doctor’s appointment.

Choose a specialist from another discipline if your research leads you in this direction.

An Example

For illustrative purposes and for brevity sake, I will keep it very simple.

If you have a fibroid and you visit a gynecology doctor who is also a surgeon, this doctor will most likely recommend a myomectomy. This is a standard treatment which has been applied over many years.

If you have a fibroid and you visit a radiologist, this doctor will likely recommend a uterine artery embolization (a.k.a. uterine fibroid embolization or UFE). This is a fairly new treatment which could still be perceived as being rather experimental and it somewhat still lacks long term track record.

If you choose the myomectomy you may wake up with a hysterectomy performed instead, because during the actual surgery the doctor had to make last moment decisions based on new discoveries. Hence, it is recommendable to instruct the surgeon to desist from a hysterectomy, because it is irreversible.

If you choose the UFE, a myomectomy could still be performed later, if the UFE was not effective or the UFE could be repeated.