Chapter 2603: Broad Knowledge and Extensive Experience

"From this perspective, it seems her cervical spondylosis is not severe, which doesn’t quite match the symptoms she reported," Cui Shaofeng said, tapping the copied medical records with his fingers like a military commander, analyzing each word written by the outpatient doctor at the time the patient sought medical help.

Tan Kelin picked up the MR scan again for a closer look. Although he isn’t specialized in orthopedics, at his academic level, he can generally interpret most scans.

Upon careful consideration by the two experts, they realized that Student Xie’s comments were more about saving face. In reality, the scan and reports do not match the symptoms the patient described.

First and foremost, it is important to understand that the primary cause of cervical spondylosis is the degenerative changes in the cervical spine. These changes, while encompassing many factors, predominantly feature bone spurs. Among middle-aged men and women, the incidence of cervical bone spurs is over ninety percent. Bone spurs are essentially bony growths. Symptoms of cervical spondylosis do not truly manifest due to bone spurs, but rather when there are pathological changes in the intervertebral discs, narrowing of the spinal canal, or compression of the blood vessels and nerves within.

When you take an X-ray, you ultimately see bony growths, thickened ligaments, yet the intervertebral discs are largely normal, the changes in the spinal canal diameter are minor, and there is no evidence of vessel or nerve compression, making it unlikely to cause typical and noticeable clinical symptoms.

Hmm, Tan Kelin and Cui Shaofeng’s expressions were silent.

Liu Li’s heart was pounding.

This time she didn’t feel that her cousin, the expert outside of obstetrics, and Leader Cui, were inappropriate to make a judgment.

After the thought-provoking educational discussion earlier, she realized she had been led astray by the patient’s repeated mention of a doctor friend.

The reason bosses are called bosses, aside from their specialization, lies in an exceptional habit: they frequently engage in academic exchanges and communicate with bosses from other specialties, thereby broadening their information scope, listening to numerous clinical cases, and gaining vast experience. Their range of knowledge across non-specialty disorders allows them to elevate vigilance.

This is why young doctors, when encountering difficult and rare conditions in clinical practice, fail to suspect other diseases; whereas when clinical bosses conduct ward rounds, they can quickly determine it’s a specialty illness from another department and call for further specialty examinations.

Of course, clinical bosses aren’t omniscient, they are simply more capable than novices. Meanwhile, bosses often do not unanimously agree. For instance, the patient’s doctor friend boss holds a completely opposite view.

The differing opinions among bosses may be related to their distinct clinical thought processes.

Perhaps Ya Xi’s mother’s doctor friend believes that the patient personally focuses on her health and that her various indicators have been maintained well since pregnancy, with a low chance of complications. If problems were to arise, they ought to have appeared earlier rather than now. This conclusion is based on the doctor’s familiarity with and understanding of the patient.

In comparison, on-site doctors unfamiliar with Ya Xi’s mother base their diagnosis solely on clinical data.

In actual clinical cases, sometimes the doctor friend is correct, sometimes the on-site doctors are accurate. Ultimately, it’s the facts that determine who is right or wrong.

As Leader Cui mentioned, doctors use their expertise to compete for dominance over the patient’s condition. If you don’t compete, you’ll see a reduction in patients, which is one thing. On the other hand, you might be correct but failing to compete results in the patient’s death. Most doctors possess compassion, never thinking a patient deserves to die for not visiting them. On the contrary, the latter outcome deeply saddens doctors, as worldwide news portrays doctors’ mentality in this regard, news is not exaggerated.