Originally Posted by
Book
My guess is that 30 years ago, a patient with similar symptoms would have been treated "empirically," a term doctors use to describe a situation for which they do not have a precise diagnosis and treatment, so that instead they must use guesswork. A layman's synonym for treated empirically would be "trial and error." In this case, the patient might have been sent home with an antibiotic and perhaps a prescription for Prednisone, a steroid used to reduce inflammation. There would have been nothing else to do. In 1975, computerized medical imaging technology was new and exotic, with limited applications.
In contrast, in 2005, over the course of a few days Quixote was given a computed tomography (CT) scan, referred to a specialist, sent to a different hospital, referred to a specialty clinic, seen by a batter of specialists there, and given yet another CT scan. Ultimately, however, she was sent home, as she might have been 30 years ago, with an antibiotic, Pednisone, and no firm diagnosis.
The CT scans and specialist consultations could have turned out differently. They might have been critically important, depending on her actual condition. Under some circumstances, treating Quixote empirically with an antibiotic and Prednisone could have been a mistake, perhaps costing some or all of her sight in one eye.
Such is the modern medicine in the United States. Doctors are able to take extra precautions. They can use more specialized knowledge and better technology to try to pin down the diagnosis. They can perform tests to rule out improbable but dangerous conditions. But only in a minority of cases does the outcome deviate from what would have been the case 30 years ago.
