Another Doctors' Dilemma

Addressing overtreatment in breast cancer: The doctors' dilemma.

Concerns about the potential harm of treatments for cancer have grown because population-based screening has markedly increased the number of patients with relatively favorable prognosis. Approximately half the 280,000 patients diagnosed with breast cancer this year will have relatively favorable prognosis: one-quarter will be diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ and another quarter will be ...

Vaginal breech delivery at term: the doctors' dilemma.

"When an operation is once performed, nobody can ever prove that it was unnecessary". The Craze for Operations from The Doctor’s Dilemma: Preface on Doctors by George Bernard Shaw, 1909*. Breech presentation complicates 3-4% of deliveries at term and it is associated with an increased risk of perinatal mortality and morbidity 1,2 . The increased fetal risks may be due to the hypoxia or trauma...

Elder Self-Neglect: Another Ethical Dilemma for Physicians.

Protest of doctors: a basic human right or an ethical dilemma

BACKGROUND Peaceful protests and strikes are a basic human right as stated in the United Nations' universal declaration on human rights. But for doctors, their proximity to life and death and the social contract between a doctor and a patient are stated as the reasons why doctors are valued more than the ordinary beings. In Pakistan, strikes by doctors were carried out to protest against lack o...

Rural doctors: a solution, or yet another problem in the making?