Revolutionary developments in medicine

Well, faithful blog readers, I am happy to tell you that I just submitted my final grant submission of the fall season, and I am looking forward to a weekend off. This has been a work-heavy few months for me, and I am glad to have some time to focus on other parts of my life. But foolishly the day my grant was due I agreed to give a talk at a local senior apartment complex, thinking "Ah, THIS TIME I won't procrastinate! I'll be done at least a week ahead of my deadline." I'll pause here, so you can stop laughing. Done? Ok, good.

So, there I was at 4:30 a.m. the day of the talk hastily pulling together some slides. And the talk, well, it was nice, actually. About 60 seniors came, they were very polite and asked very thoughtful questions. It didn't hurt that my own 92-year-old grandmother was able to attend.

After the talk concluded, a gentleman came up to me, and asked me a question about prostate cancer screening for men in their 90s. You guys already know my bias about that. But in the course of the conversation it became clear that he knew more than the average patient, so I asked him what his background was. Turns out he was a general internist for 50 years in rural Wisconsin. He was an internist when it meant something to be an internist, when that was THE prestigious career choice for medicine. When you knew everything about everything, and there was no problem you couldn't wax poetic about. He told me about when he first saw CT images, about how revolutionary that was. And when antibiotics and steroids first made it into practice (imagine!). We discussed home visits, and how he used to go up to two hours away from his home practice to see a patient if need be. What a concept, what a difference a few decades makes.

As I drove back to my office to finish up my grant I wondered what the revolutionary development in medicine will be during my career. Have I already seen it (so-called targeted therapies maybe? IMRT? Growth factors?). I feel like we have so far to go against cancer that I am excited to see what advances will take place in my career. Because it's got to get better than what we have right now.