Re: color doppler ultrasound to detect prostate cancer?

If a 50 year old person received a virtual colonoscopy every 5 years, he
or she is putting their future health in danger. There is usally NO danger
involved in getting a normal colonoscopy every 5 years--after the age of
50 years old.

I'll disagree about NO danger. Anesthesia, even if it doesn't
actually put the patient completely to sleep, presents some risks.
So does the recovery.

Just getting taken out of the hospital and being driven home not
understanding what was going on, barely able to walk, and half-conscious
presents some risk that I'd fall over and hurt myself. And I think
I did fall over a couple of times after my (real) colonoscopy, but
I was too out of it to really notice and the damage wasn't very
noticible several days later.

Getting left home alone in that condition presents a very real
possibility I don't have a chance to actually get out of bed and
take care of myself before dehydration, starvation, and/or hypoglycemia
take over (after 3 1/2 days) and make sure I never will. That made
it somewhat riskier than Russian Roulette with 2 bullets in the
gun.

Gordon L. Burditt

Gordon,
Please note that I used the words "usally no danger" in my post. There is

Many dangers are still there whether or not anything bad happens
in one particular case. I don't think there are any patients for
which there is absolutely NO risk they just stop breathing and can't
be revived with anesthesia, even though the risk is tiny. Granted,
sometimes the risk only applies to certain people, for example, I
don't have to worry about problems that only apply if I'm pregnant.

I'd accept "usually no danger" if the only way to be hurt is
to be allergic to peanuts or have a rare genetic deficiency.
But everyone breathes.

always some risk involved in almost all invasive medical procedures.

And for anesthesia, the problem may happen even if the invasive
part of the procedure never happens (e.g. the probe or laser or
whatever breaks before getting it near me, so they wake me up and
send me home). And I suspect there is some very small risk that
someone is very allergic to the anesthesia and doesn't even live
long enough to get to the invasive part.

I don't know whether I'm allergic to penicillin (no, that's not an
anesthetic) or not, but there was an incident in childhood which
suggests that me or one of my siblings is. I always tell doctors
I might be. A doctor offered to test me to see if it was really a
problem. I declined (as I recall, the bad reaction as a child
caused severe itching but nothing really dangerous). Another doctor
says that such a test could be fatal in minutes if I was seriously
allergic, even if I started already hooked up to monitors in the
emergency room, and was given a very small dose. He also said it
was unlikely I'm still allergic as an adult, but he's not giving
me any penicillin.

That's the reason we have to sign all of those papers prior to surgery.
Those papers help protect doctors from lawsuits when they screw up--such
as cutting off the wrong arm or leg.

A lot of the risks are present even if no one screws up. If I did
fall over and twist my ankle in the hospital while in an
anesthesia-induced fog and trying to get dressed per nurse's
instructions, was that someone's mistake? Is letting me recover
home alone a mistake? (He did say I couldn't drive home, and I
didn't). Is suddenly discovering I'm allergic to some drug I've
never taken before (with a known risk of one in a billion having
problems) causing death in 2 minutes someone's mistake?

Gordon L. Burditt
.

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