71–80 of 389 posts
This is one of those medical revolutions that I am waiting dearly for. Facilities that are not hospitals(to avoid the risk of occupying medical devices that sick people need) built to _regulary_ check up otherwise healthy people for preventive care. Heck, I have so many alerts defined on my monitoring setup for servers to watch for signals of failure before they get too big. But, my own body is not observed until som…
If one wanted to invest in the people doing this kind of work, what would you buy? Grail isn't public and I'm not a venture capitalist.
This is one of those medical revolutions that I am waiting dearly for. Facilities that are not hospitals(to avoid the risk of occupying medical devices that sick people need) built to _regulary_ check up otherwise healthy people for preventive care. Heck, I have so many alerts defined on my monitoring setup for servers to watch for signals of failure before they get too big. But, my own body is not observed until som…
Regularly checking people that are otherwise healthy for cancer will turn up a lot of cancer through false positives or slowly growing ones, will lead to a lot of unnecessary intervention and will in fact lead to a reduction in quality of life and lifespan. This is one of the reasons why exhaustive cancer screening (which was more costly in the past but could have been done) was not promoted, it had nothing to do wit…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regularly checking people that are otherwise healthy for cancer will turn up a lot of cancer through false positives or slowly growing ones, will lead to a lot of unnecessary intervention and will in fact lead to a reduction in quality of life and lifespan. This is one of the reasons why exhaustive cancer screening (which was more costly in the past but could have been done) was not promoted, it had nothing to do wit…
I see it more in the vein of vaccinations. A preventive care activity, not as a reaction to a symptom. Speaking only for myself, I am regularly screened, asymptomatically, for skin, prostate and colon cancers. That screening is a non-event for me because I grew up knowing that we will get screened on a regular basis for these cancers. With additional asymptomatic testing, there will be false positives. Re-test using…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. Let’s say the test shows “very likely” for pancreatic cancer. Now you do imaging. Ok, nothing there? Now what? Biopsy? That’s general anesthesia now and costly (for the patient or govt). Biopsy is negative. Now what? Start chemo? Watch and wait? For how long? Do a biopsy every 6 months? None of these tests are 100% accurate. If broadly used, a false positive of 0.1% will result in tens of thousands getting unnec…
I think for pancreatic cancer early detection just means it gives you more time to enjoy a slightly longer bucket list. For bowel cancers however, this could potentially buy many extra years since it's currently difficult to detect early.
This is one of those medical revolutions that I am waiting dearly for. Facilities that are not hospitals(to avoid the risk of occupying medical devices that sick people need) built to _regulary_ check up otherwise healthy people for preventive care. Heck, I have so many alerts defined on my monitoring setup for servers to watch for signals of failure before they get too big. But, my own body is not observed until som…
Regularly checking people that are otherwise healthy for cancer will turn up a lot of cancer through false positives or slowly growing ones, will lead to a lot of unnecessary intervention and will in fact lead to a reduction in quality of life and lifespan. This is one of the reasons why exhaustive cancer screening (which was more costly in the past but could have been done) was not promoted, it had nothing to do wit…
"Our tests are bad, so lets not test" is not a thought worthy of respect. This states that you know about a problem but want to continue to ignore that problem. Reprehensible.
No, we should take the exact opposite approach. Test everyone constantly until such methods become both cheap and powerful. So yeah we all have some cancer load but if the diagnostic or treatment systems can't deal with that reality then those systems need to change.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regularly checking people that are otherwise healthy for cancer will turn up a lot of cancer through false positives or slowly growing ones, will lead to a lot of unnecessary intervention and will in fact lead to a reduction in quality of life and lifespan. This is one of the reasons why exhaustive cancer screening (which was more costly in the past but could have been done) was not promoted, it had nothing to do wit…
My car’s check engine light came on and a costly mechanic visit didn’t find any problems so we decided to remove the check engine light.
And maybe out of your garage as well...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have heard your argument on the false positives and unnecessary interventions many times. It is not a good argument. In fact, it makes no sense. If you get a positive with an uncertainty in its accuracy, at the very least, the test is repeated. But even more, you can use the information from the investigation of the reason for the false positive to improve the tests in the first place. If we weren't humans and the un…
Your belief has no representation in medical science, which is mostly evidence based. A lot of data has been collected on this, studies (many) have been conducted and the general consensus is that more testing absent symptoms does not lead to improved patient outcomes. That you want to have some kind of theoretical argument in the face of this evidence might be interesting to you but it isn't to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have heard your argument on the false positives and unnecessary interventions many times. It is not a good argument. In fact, it makes no sense. If you get a positive with an uncertainty in its accuracy, at the very least, the test is repeated. But even more, you can use the information from the investigation of the reason for the false positive to improve the tests in the first place. If we weren't humans and the un…
Your belief has no representation in medical science, which is mostly evidence based. A lot of data has been collected on this, studies (many) have been conducted and the general consensus is that more testing absent symptoms does not lead to improved patient outcomes. That you want to have some kind of theoretical argument in the face of this evidence might be interesting to you but it isn't to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regularly checking people that are otherwise healthy for cancer will turn up a lot of cancer through false positives or slowly growing ones, will lead to a lot of unnecessary intervention and will in fact lead to a reduction in quality of life and lifespan. This is one of the reasons why exhaustive cancer screening (which was more costly in the past but could have been done) was not promoted, it had nothing to do wit…
I detest this mindset. It is incredibly counter productive. "Our tests are bad, so lets not test" is not a thought worthy of respect. This states that you know about a problem but want to continue to ignore that problem. Reprehensible. No, we should take the exact opposite approach. Test everyone constantly until such methods become both cheap and powerful. So yeah we all have some cancer load but if the diagnostic o…
You are treating this like a software problem, but it isn't, it's a medical problem, and medical problems tend to be complex because they have a ton of confounding variables that make it hard to have a one-size-fits-all method for dealing with medical issues.
What needs to change is that people need to realize that they have a field of expertise and that the medical domain has its own experts who typically dedicate a lifetime to their profession, their general consensus is that improved tests are welcome but in and of themselves are not enough to guarantee improved patient outcomes. Yes, this is unfortunate, but it is also a simple reality, you can either accept that or not, that's up to you but if you want to make a change there than you probably should join the medical profession. Most likely by the time that you have completed the requirements you will have shifted your viewpoint away from the software domain's mindset that all bugs can be found and squashed by the next sprint. Which by the way judging by the general quality of software out there is also something that doesn't work out in practice as we believe it should in theory.