In theory, but there are finite medical resources, and this was a clear waste. We don’t do full-body scans of everyone with a minor headache, even though doing so might find a brain tumor; similarly, it’s not good medicine to do a full cardiac workup of a patient with two unrelated known, chronic issues and no new symptoms–least hypothesis was that those two symptoms were still unrelated.
Here’s another example: in 2000 I had a ganglion cyst removed from my foot. I was conscious, and after removing it, the doc showed it to me. I said, “Are you going to send that to the lab?” and he said “Absolutely”. When I saw him the next week, he told me, “It was nothing; I knew it was nothing. But because you asked, I sent it to pathology, because they told us in med school that if someone asks and we don’t do it, and that’s the one time we’re wrong, we’re done.” Not good medicine; he agreed, was admitting it. More money wasted.
Right, and I could have refused it (and if I had the same experience now, six months later, I would). But most pax wouldn’t think it through, so it’s just waste.
And pax without insurance might do it because they don’t realize how silly it is, and spend $x,xxx that they can’t really afford, just because they’re scared.
So doc is scared, scares patient. That’s not medicine. Or shouldn’t be.
When mine dropped into the low thirties, they put a Halter device (basically a continuous 24 hour cardiograph) on my and discovered a 7 second gap with no beat at all during the night. I was immediately fitted with a pacemaker and have been a steady 60 ever since. They had to replace it a year ago because, after nearly 15 years the battery was running down. Before it started dropping, it was generally between 50 and 60, but I had been using beta blockers for about 35 years. When it started dropping, they stopped them, but it continued to go down. Before I used the beta blockers, it was probably mostly around 70 resting.