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What ovarian cancer can teach us about medicine, as a whole

The New York Times has a story on problems with the treatment of ovarian cancer that holds lessons for many aspects of modern medicine. The big issue here: Local doctors, even local specialists, might not have the information necessary to properly treat patients who come in with problems those doctors don’t have a lot of experience with. And those doctors don’t always refer patients to people with more expertise. In a world with constantly changing information, how do you get that information to the people patients are most in contact with? In a world with more and more evidence available, how do you change traditions in the medical community that apply treatments based on “what my teachers did” and “what I’ve always done”? Big questions here, not a lot of answers.

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