Do doctors recommend same therapy for patients as selves?

Doctors tend to recommend the lower mortality option to their patients It appears that physicians recommend different treatments for patients than they would choose for themselves. Before you conclude that this is somewhat selfish, please read on. A recent study by a team of sociologists and doctors (Archives in Internal Medicine, April 2011) points to an interesting dichotomy. The study involved two different scenarios, both hypothetical. In scenario one, the researchers interviewed 500 doctors and asked them to imagine that either they or one of their patients had colon cancer, and they had to choose one of two surgical treatment options. Both surgeries shared the possibility of 80 per cent success, without any complications. Of the remaining 20 per cent involving side effects, surgery one had the danger of four different kinds of troubles, such as removal of the colon, or chronic diarrhea, or bowel obstruction, or wound infection. These accounted for a total of 4 per cent complications. The rest 16 per cent was chances of death or mortality. In surgery 2, there were no complications at all, but the failure rate was 20 per cent, that is, for every 100 people operated for colon cancer, 20 die. Now, which option is better: surgery with 16 per cent death and 4 per cent complications, or surgery with no complications but 20 per cent chances of death? In other words, should we risk a higher chance of death but if successful, there will be no additional trouble: a true doctor's dilemma. The results of the study were interesting. Of the 500 doctors interviewed, 242 responded. Out of these, a significant number of them chose surgery 2 (no side effects but higher chances of mortality) for themselves. In contrast, when asked for recommendation to a patient who comes to them, many of them (60 of the 242) recommended surgery 1 (with lower death chances, but side effects) to their patients. Scenario 2 involved a flu epidemic. Here the team of researchers interviewed 1,600 primary care physicians and gave them two treatment options for recommendation. One group was asked to imagine that they themselves had been infected with the newly emergent flu virus.