Medpundit explains why it is sometimes difficult to apply evidence-based medicine to patients:
Most people believe intuitively that doing a periodic chest x-ray has the potential to save them from lung cancer. The worst scenario is when a patient is diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and then blames their physician for never doing a chest x-ray or CT scan, even if they didn’t have any symptoms. In fact, you could have a chest x-ray every month and still die of advanced lung cancer. Lung cancer is one of those cancers that has many faces. There are some that are so aggressive, finding them early makes no difference. By the time they’ve shown up, they’ve already spread. There are others that are slow and passive and easily treated, even if we only find them once they become symptomatic. But try telling an angry cancer patient that. Especially one who read the first set of news stories touting the benefits of routine CT scans, but missed this weeks’s news.
