<p>Bloodwork reveals issues, possibly diabetes. Is it? Do we prescribe an Rx, try diet first, tell the patient to lose weight? Try herbal or alternative medicine? Run further tests?</p>
<p>Knee pain doesn’t reveal arthritis, tears, anything obvious. What’s the next step? Wait, tell him to exercise, tell him to stay off it, prescribe, order a scan (despite costs and etc) or? </p>
<p>There’s a reason you aim to build relationships of mutual trust and respect with your docs. This is not plug it into google and hit enter.</p>
<p>A second opinion is a second opinion- about whatever it is that concerns the patient. It can confirm a diagnosis, reveal further information, whatever.</p>
<p>"Should we use chemo? Which agent, and how many rounds? With or without radiation? It’s just not that specific. It may be for some diseases, sure. But not for the hard cases.</p>
<p>I confess that I was somewhat unnerved when I realized that doctors don’t always know exactly what to do–even if they convey to the patient that they do. They are often making a more-or-less educated guess."</p>
<p>I understand your point and I think we may be discussing two separate questions. Lets take for example one agent of chemo that the doctor decides to pick. What I am suggesting is that for that particular agent, there is a defined method of treatment with certain latitude that is based on patients age, weight, condition etc. and a doctor can’t arbitrarily choose a dose and frequency because he/she wants to experiment. If the doctor chose a different agent, again, there are certain parameters they need to follow. Two different doctors may disagree on which agent to pick based on which pharma gave them a hawaii jaunt to learn about agent (tongue in cheek!).</p>
<p>On a side note, anyone on an all fruit diet? It sounds like dietary habits might have contributed to Steve Job’s cancer. Cancer statistics seem to prefer men too.</p>
<p>permit me to get back on topic with my opinion to Op, asking what to do–
2 (good) choices: Do a paper more “in line” with what you believe to be the prof’s expected response,
or
continue to be contrary, but spend extra time and effort researching and documenting so your perspective is harder to ignore.</p>