4 ms·
The problem, just as in cancer, is not detection. It's what to do once you find it. Many aneurysms/cancers that could be found will turn out to be harmless, and
by TaupeRanger 6y ago
The problem, just as in cancer, is not detection. It's what to do once you find it. Many aneurysms/cancers that could be found will turn out to be harmless, and the risk of harming someone physically and/or psychologically from unnecessarily treating them is not negligible. There isn't much we can do for aneurysms unless they are obviously immediately threatening.
- TheHypnotist 6y agoA doctor basically told my mother "The cure could be worse than the problem". So they just monitor.
- petercooper 6y agoThis. The risk calculations can be quite scary and people's responses to them can be poor given a powerful human dislike of uncertainty. Consider a totally fabricated and naive example of finding a minor aneurysm with a 0.1% annual risk of rupture versus a 10% risk of death during surgery.. there are many people who would take the surgery to remove the uncertainty. (And this is a highly contrived example, real life is far more complicated!)