[Alien1Being]

Your country has decided to ration MRIs.

Here in Australia, it is a one to two day wait for a MRI. Costs 240 AUD, (160 USD ) for a 1.5 Tesla MRI and AUD 400 for a 3 Tesla MRI just up the road.

And if I mark the request Urgent, I can send a patient 5 minutes up the road and have it done within the hour.

Are you in the UK ? I know that the UK health system has effectively collapsed, due to that country's poverty and chaos.

Even in Sudan the waiting time is less than in your country:

"Due to the ongoing conflict in Sudan, healthcare infrastructure and diagnostic imaging services have faced severe disruptions, with wait times for an MRI now extending from several weeks to months"

[ggm]

As an Australian I've had specialists say improved resolution is leading to over diagnosis and over presentation risks. An argument in the margins and one which loses its force as we learn to interpret finer grained imaging better, do you see this as a valid critique? (The case I last heard of was a future blockage/calcification risk in the carotid which the specialist said was way way too young to act on and would not have been noted before imaging improved)

[defrost]

> do you see this as a valid critique?

It's a valid point to raise, and a point critical of "boutique" medicine practices specialising in insecurities of the rich.

In a nutshell our flesh is rarely homogenous, more often tarnished by odd blemishes and gnarly growths that often amount to naught.

Experienced work a day doctors appreciate seeing odd lumps earlier but refrain from taking any action until some threshold is crossed "for fear of doing greater harm" - the knives that cut things out, the concoctions that burn things away often come with side effects.

Contrasting that, the Lamborghini doctors actively self promoting their genius on 60 Minutes and other Australian paid journaltising media - they're up for any excuse to charge for an "essential procedure" (pinky promise no failures).

[Alien1Being]

Improved resolution is sometimes irrelevant, but the advent of high Telsa scans has improved multiple sclerosis diagnosis and has led to revision of the MacDonald criteria. Particularly the addition of of the central vein sign as an imaging marker and the addition of the paramagnetic rim lesion https://radiopaedia.org/articles/mcdonald-diagnostic-criteri...

As for incidentally found abnormalities, acting on every abnormality is AI level dumb. One has to use Bayesian reasoning and consider risk, context and the likelihood of the lesion being real.

[switchbak]

This is in Canada. Our healthcare problems are both well known and well documented, but also strongly resistant to being solved. I do wish we had a system as efficient as what you describe. I’ve personally been on the receiving end of this nonsense. And it is actively costing lives every year. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of course.

No joke, it’s actually a lot easier to schedule an assisted suicide than it is to receive proper treatment in a large number of cases.