joostersin Hacker News • Recommends
On “I Now Have a Cardiologist”
There's a great (and short) video suggesting why it's not a good idea to run as many medical tests as possible, and it's not because of the cost: link to this video
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If money was no object, should you run every medical test?
Medlife Crisis
580K subscribers • 5 videos on Rounds
- Recommended by 2 people, in Hacker News, across 2 different months.
- May be out of date. Uploaded 8 years ago, in an area where guidance changes.
For anyone, no background needed. Education, not medical advice.
262K views8 years ago2 recommendations
Evidence and public healthClinical medicineDiagnosis and clinical reasoningLab tests and biomarkers
A doctor explains why performing unnecessary medical tests can lead to false positives, anxiety, and incorrect diagnoses due to Bayesian probability.
Why are some patients hard to diagnose? Surely you can just run every test - doctors refuse to because they don't want to spend money, right?! Not quite. A millionaire patient asked me; if he was willing to pay, why not send off every possible test on him so we'd definitely find out what's wrong? It's a deceptively complex question. So towards the end of a nightshift, delirious from sleep-deprivation and mainlining coffee into my jugular, I had a crack at explaining. Let me know what you think! This video makes a nod towards Bayesian inference - arising from Bayes' theorem. Thomas Bayes is a towering figure in statistical analysis and continues to have a huge legacy in the modern world. ------------ More Medlife Crisis: medlifecrisis.co.uk twitter.com/medcrisis facebook.com/Medlifecrisis instagram.com/medcrisisWhy it's here
2 people recommend thisWhat people say. Recommended as a clear, concise explanation of why over-testing is clinically harmful rather than helpful.
tasty_freezein Hacker News • Recommends
On “Are we screening too much for skin cancer? It's complicated”
An under 3-minute video by a funny and informative doctor explaining this (youtube handle "medlife crisis"): link to this video
user_7832in Hacker News • Mentions
On “FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor”
I get your point, however I think there are a few confounding things. For a lot of people, if you get a positive result from a test that a doctor brushes off that's not going to go well. I'm very much in favor of more testing personally, there are almost certainly folks who're on SSRIs who'd benefit more from Vit D/Mg supplementation for example. Another thing I seem to remember in his video was that a tumor is not necessarily dangerous. Out of a hundred (say) tumors in a person's life, only maybe 5 are risky. But I'm paraphrasing this badly. Edit: link to this video is one of the videos, however I think he's talked about this more (likely on instagram or another video too).