Do You know which doctor should you consult for your condition?

Finding the right doctor for treating your condition in India is like finding the right guru!! In my practice I find in so many instances that patients go from one specialist to another and then another and by chance sometimes visit the right person - who resolves their problem and cure them in no time. 

Sometimes the simplest of the problem can lead o the gravest of all complications. An example is the case of Phimosis in Diabetics. Generally diabetics will seldom visit an urologist - they will see their own doctor or a diabetologist unless they are referred. Also not all doctors will examine their patients thoroughly especially the genitalia for that matter I hardly find any doctor ever doing a rectal examination in India.  

Urinary tract infections in diabetics can lead to life threatening complications such as sepsis, kidney failure and so on. And it can all start with a chronically infected foreskin that requires a simple procedure such as circumcision.  The tight, thickened and infected foreskin leads to uncontrolled blood sugar, recurrent UTI and sometimes even a necrosed papilla from   the kidney leading  to swelling and infection of them kidney and urosepsis.  Why is this so often missed - for two reasons - one lack of awareness among many in medical profession and second not examining the patient. 

So often I also see  patient's foreskin and I know they are diabetics. I also have patients who have had prostate surgery being done on diabetics for urinary infections and patients continuing to have UTI because their foreskins were infected in the first place. A simple circumcision in such situations takes care of their problems and also achieves better glycemic control.

There are so many such examples I can write about to illustrate this problem. In most instances it is doctors in the profession who are to blame for either continuing to treat the patients even when thy fail; to cure them or refer them to the wrong specialist. It is worse in corporate hospitals because the doctors don’t like to transfer the patients to another specialist. This is another story altogether. Maybe we can discuss this aspect some other time. Delivering the right patient care with minimum hospital costs is the big issue that needs to be addressed by the profession itself and this will require many initiatives.