Clinical Conversations

November 10th, 2012

Podcast 159: Making the Clinical Diagnosis, But Blowing the Patient’s Treatment Preference

Running time: 20 min. In some diseases there are two diagnoses to make: the clinical diagnosis and the diagnosis of what the patient’s treatment preference is. The first is hard enough to make, and the widening choice of treatment choices complicates the second. Welcome to the task of “preference diagnosis,” which can lead to disappointment and worse […]

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July 16th, 2011

Podcast 126: Placebos and Medical ‘Meaning’

Last week’s New England Journal of Medicine paper on the placebo effect in evaluating asthma treatments was fascinating in itself. The editorial that accompanied it, however, was a delight. It asks clinicians to think less about laboratory measures of cure, and more about the patient’s satisfaction with treatment — whether the treatment was “real” or not. […]

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March 19th, 2010

Podcast 79: Prostate cancer, patients’ consultations, and the treatments they receive

Patients who consult urologists only are more likely to get radical prostatectomy, and those who consult both urologists and radiation oncologists are more likely to get radiation. Those who see internists are more likely to receive watchful waiting. What are all these facts trying to tell us? Our conversation is with the principal authors of a […]

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