Thursday, July 28, 2011

Clueless doctors - and clueless patients !

I just received an email from a very upset patient.

" Dear Doctor,

Can you please help me make sense of my report ? I was asked to give my semen sample for culture and sensitivity. On the report I received just now, the only statement was - " sterile semen culture'.Nothing else ! What does this mean ? Does this mean I am sterile and cannot get my wife pregnant ? How do I treat this ?"

This would be comic, if it weren't so tragic !

A sterile semen culture is a good report, and means that no bacteria were grown from the semen after culturing it in the lab for 48 hours. This means the semen is free of infection.

However, the poor man mis-interpreted this report as meaning that he was sterile !

I wish doctors were a little more thoughtful when designing reports. The least they could do was provide a short explanation of what the result means !



1 comment:

  1. Anonymous2:48 PM

    hahaha!!! hillarious on one side but it is very sad that doctors send such a report to layman people who do not have prior medical knowledge !!

    ReplyDelete

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