The Washington Post's channel on innovations. For us, it's all about what's next.
The hospital admissions sheet simply read: “Name: Buddha; DOB: 1662.”
The 350-year-old patient’s visit started with a routine x-ray in the summer of 2008. But doctors discovered there were signs of an unknown mass inside his head and yet another inside his stomach – objects that his new caretakers were intent on identifying and extracting if at all possible.
Professors are better at teaching the cut-and-dried academic science—physics and chemistry, theoretical models, and diagnosis/treatment decision trees—than the messy but critical subjective parts of medicine: When is it worth subjecting a patient to additional testing or treatment? What would motivate a particular patient to eat broccoli instead of bacon cheeseburgers?
