Atul Gwande Overkill Summary

Atul Gwande’s article, Overkill, published by The New Yorker, discusses numerous situations of misdiagnosis and over medicalization of trivial health issues. Our society views pain, a natural phenomenon, as a medical issue that needs professional attention. By using advanced testing and scans, individuals are looking for a problem and treatment. In one day, Dr. Rwanda, a general surgeon, saw eight patients. Seven of those eight patients have received unnecessary and underwent high-cost test. This example lays the groundwork for dissecting a key issue in healthcare; over medicalization.
Gwande, using real stories and research, give many reasons as to why people are undergoing treatments that are not needed. The article has an over-arching theme
For example, the article states how millions of electrocardiograms are done each year on patients that do not fit the criteria for the testing. This leads to the next point made in the article discussing how improved but sensitive technology plays into over medicalization. No human body is perfect and the combination of over testing and sensitive technology picks up on insignificant abnormalities which doctors report to patients. Patients want an automatic fix making surgery is the go to solution. People tend to favor medical treatment over therapies. The article outlined the story a man who injured his meniscus. A surgeon recommended surgery but, a second opinion with a physical therapist made him decide to give therapy a try. In this case, the physical therapy worked and helped to avoid an unnecessary surgery. This patient did his research but many times the doctor uses their knowledge to influence the patient. Information asymmetry, a term coined by economist Kenneth Arrow, explains the phenomenon of how doctors know more about the value of medical treatment and can alter the quality of the advice which they give. They have the