The Medical Problem

Tonight I am going to talk about a problem there is with all of the medical studies.

I was watching the news tonight, it was on both the local and world, and they were talking about heart attacks. The focus of the studies were on women and their symptoms.  The whole gist of the study was how to most talked about symptom, a shooting pain down the left arm, wasn't the most telling sign for women.  The signs could be a pain in the lower back, pains in the neck, blah, blah, blah...  The problem is that many of these symptoms can be the signs of many other things.  And this is the problem with many other medical studies.  Most of the time the symptoms have a lot of similarities to other medical issues.  If you were to actually look at the symptoms in the list (I can't remember now, CRS you know), it is amazing how many things they point out could be a heart attack in a woman.  Some of them would not normally be considered leading to a heart attack.

Now before anyone accuses me of being biased and defending the doctor's in the urgent care facilities or emergency rooms, let me be clear I am not!  To begin with, I am extremely glad that this is getting some attention as heart attacks are the #1 killer of women, not breast cancer!  It is about time it is mentioned as a real problem.  If this study is true with regards to the misdiagnosis that is happening I would guess that the number of deaths could be reduced drastically if when someone comes in to one of these facilities - regardless of race, religion, or sex - all things were checked.  What I am complaining about is the study itself.  Studies like this are what made my grandmother on my mother's side a hypochondriac.  They spread paranoia for no reason other than to justify the financing of the study, not to mention allowing the author to get their name out there.  The other issue with many of these studies are the number of people involved in the study.  Quite often there are numbers near 1000.  I have never been able to understand how such a small percentage of the population is supposed to represent the whole population.

I understand that they want to get information out there so that doctors can make informed decisions but I think they need to do a little thinking prior to the release.  This particular study could save some lives if applied correctly.  Of course, it could also cost a lot of money because every little ache or pain doesn't mean you are having a heart attack...