Medical students learn a lot about the management of diseases by reading textbooks and by listening to their medical professor's lectures. They learn how to use flow charts and algorithms for managing a particular lesion, and this has a sound scientific basis which allows them to practise evidence-based medicine in a systematic fashion. For example, if they have to treat a patient who has a chocolate cyst (endometrioma), they will plan their management based on medical variables such as the size of the cyst; the age of the woman; and whether she has any symptoms or not.
However, there's one key ingredient which is missing in the medical flow charts published in the textbook, which I think is the most important question doctors should be asking. Sadly, they fail to do so because they're not taught to do this, This is - What does the patient want? Doctors need to remember that we're not…
