Exploitation of patient obsession

Emotionally-influenced medical treatment

Incidence

Surgeons continued to use injections of an enzyme, chymopapain, to dissolve ruptured discs, even after it was revealed that it probably aggravated the condition, because their patient preferred injections to surgery.

Claim

With the extensive increase in the range of health related products, whether pharmaceutical or advocated by the alternative health community, preoccupation with personal health can lead to debilitating psychological consequences. Some practitioners, especially of alternative cures, actively feed people's anxieties, without necessarily being able to focus on specific illnesses. Whereas practitioners of conventional medicine focusing on specific conditions, overlook the emotional, dietary and environmental causes which may subsequently engender others symptoms. Both approaches are distorted by a need to maximize the financial exploitation of the patient.