Hello friends, today is Saturday!

I bring an opinion article in IntraMed: medical news.

Here’s the summary:

‘ Very far from what is usually believed, medical diagnosis is not the automatic application of scientific knowledge to people. Medicine is not a science, it is a human discipline based on the link and mediated communication.

A clinic is not an experimental laboratory isolated from the world.


We don´t manage diseases, we manage sick people. Pathologies are under the most diverse forms. Sculpted by the experience, the personal story, expressive, linguistic and cultural skills of an individual. It’s biography as much as biology.

There is no way to turn this meeting into the reproduction of algorithms and preset courses of action without depriving it of its own foundation. Words, gestures and observation are the technologies of greater complexity that physicians have to formulate a diagnostic hypothesis. It is naive, and often dangerous, assume that the relationship built between doctor and patient can be replaced by the more sophisticated examinations.

That which some call ‘clinical eye’ is the product of the interpretation of the meaning of those studies that a qualified person makes subordinating them to the individual history of a patient.

The rest is secondary, often dispensable or redundant.

Authentic clinical talent consists of selection which is the infinite of possibilities with a doctor has today to study one patient rather than the mere reading of their results.
Technology gave the medicine never before imagined powerful tools. But none of them the attentive listening of a narration may be replaced or the enormous power that resides in the word to understand, accompany and heal.

No one supports the uncertainty regarding their own destiny or that of their beings dear. But medicine does not do miracles. We can not promise what we know that we can not give. The horror of’ uncertainty’ is an understandable response to pain or death. But the clinical diagnosis is just a probability. A mixture of science and art that brings the story of a person with the best knowledge available.

Only the formation of professionals educated in critical thinking, healthy skepticism and strong awareness of the fundamentals and the limits of their task can prevent us from that debacle.

How many patients claims for an MRI for suffer back pain, while all evidence-based guidelines recommend not to do it except in very specific circumstances?

How many parents would claim to be prescribed antibiotics to children with fever when warnings around the world are endless so that such a thing is not done?

The dramatic bacterial multidrug resistance of our days is one of its serious consequences. The absurd belief in diagnostic imaging studies to surpass and replace medical reasoning was established as part of the common sense.’.

Very interesting, what do you think?

Happy weekend

Gabi