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If money was no object, should you run every medical test?

Medlife Crisis2 HN recommenders · 2019–2024
263K views · explainer · evergreen · Uploaded 2018-09-02

A doctor from Medlife Crisis explains in under three minutes why even a rich patient should not simply order every medical test, touching on pre-test probability and Bayesian reasoning. False positives make blanket testing counterproductive.

HN people link it as a short, funny and accurate explanation of why over-testing and over-screening can do harm.

Medicine & infectious diseaseProbability & game theory

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3 comments from Hacker News

@joosters2019 · in “I Now Have a Cardiologist”

There's a great (and short) video suggesting why it's not a good idea to run as many medical tests as possible, and it's not because of the cost: [VIDEO]

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@tasty_freeze2021 · in “Are we screening too much for skin cancer? It's complicated”

An under 3-minute video by a funny and informative doctor explaining this (youtube handle "medlife crisis"): [VIDEO]

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@user_78322024 · in “FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor”

I get your point, however I think there are a few confounding things. For a lot of people, if you get a positive result from a test that a doctor brushes off that's not going to go well. I'm very much in favor of more testing personally, there are almost certainly folks who're on SSRIs who'd benefit more from Vit D/Mg supplementation for example. Another thing I seem to remember in his video was that a tumor is not necessarily dangerous. Out of a hundred (say) tumors in a person's life, only maybe 5 are risky. But I'm paraphrasing this badly. Edit: [VIDEO] is one of the videos, however I think he's talked about this more (likely on instagram or another video too).

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