The field of medicine is rapidly evolving. We are constantly developing technological advancements that better allow us to save lives. However, there are still several areas that we can improve independent of technology. I want to be a doctor someday, and while I was doing research on the field of medicine, I noticed a problem with the differences in diagnosis and treatment of male and female patients.
A Cause for Concern
I see this as a two-part problem.
Firstly, there is a subconscious categorization of disorders as either “male” or “female”. Due to this categorization, doctors often fail to diagnose patients with disorders associated with the opposite gender until the condition becomes dangerous, or even fatal. Moreover, in medicine, the conditions for diagnosis are often based on the understanding of male physiology as opposed to the particular symptoms across the gender spectrum.
Women and even men with lower testosterone levels experience different symptoms for common disorders and are often incorrectly diagnosed. In other words, we are putting over half our population at risk. Frankly, the statistic scares me.
Doctors, for example, discharge female heart attack patients more than their male counterparts because heart diseases are stereotypically “male”. Furthermore, women experience different heart attack symptoms than men which makes the attack symptoms harder to recognize. In addition to heart disease, there are too many news articles referencing doctors who fail to take chronic pain seriously. I hear too many personal stories of women with endometriosis “overstating” pain from their own menstrual cycles. When common disorders are still so difficult to diagnose, we find ourselves with an alarming problem
The Colossal Impacts
We have much to fear. Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death; chronic pain affects millions of people worldwide, and these lapses in the quality of medical care have colossal repercussions. When doctors don’t treat these patients correctly, they fundamentally don’t uphold their commitment to the fair practice of medicine. The dangerous assumptions – that a checklist of symptoms is “one size fits all” and that medical communities know as much as they need to know about these disorders – mean that we don’t prioritize improving our diagnostic process despite evidence clearly indicating the need for change.
But we can most definitely solve this problem. With more research, doctors can access more precise and accurate information on how symptoms and treatments differ along the gender spectrum, and better fulfill their role of promoting public health. Ultimately, I hope to assist the journey towards a diagnostic process that accurately reflects the society that we now find ourselves part of.
Until next time,
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