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Then, a week later, I received some unexpected news from the
clinic (the patient having given consent for the information to be sent
to me): several HIV tests had been carried out, and alL were negative.
Everyone was most surprised. The patient had no Mediterranean or
Jewish background and did not seem to be immunocompromised, so
why had he developed the sarcoma? The patient telephoned me and
was understandably over the moon. From thinking that he was HIV
positive to having "just" a skin cancer made a huge difference to him.
This incident made me think of how rarely things are clear-cut in
medicine. All the surgery staff were convinced that this patient was in-
fected with HIV, possibly even immunocompromised with AIDS. It
turned out we were all wrong. As doctors, we reLy on odds and likeli-
hood, but it is important to bear in mind that sometimes the unlikely
(odd) will happen and take us by surprise.
Mark Taubert, GP registrar
Ту Bryn Surgery, Caerphilly
BMJ 2005;330:1063 (7 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7499.1063
2. Give the summary of the text
3. Extract the key words , then analyze them according to the
principles of thesaurus-making up.
4. Where there is a possibility of a prognosis being bad, do
you think this should be communicated to the patient as soon as
possible? Why / Why not?
5. Discuss what conclusions can be drawn from the text about
giving patients results of their tests.