Best Cancer Treatment Centers in Dallas: Online Research

Information may not be reliable

The late Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert once quipped, "The Internet is wonderful…you can find information about anything there. And some of it is even true." In no area of life is this insight truer than when searching for medical information, and therein lies a very real danger.

From what we’ve seen as doctors in one of the best cancer treatment centers in Dallas, it is so easy to "research" symptoms and diseases and treatments on the Internet that it lures a great number of people into thinking 1) that all of the information they find is true, 2) that all (or any) of it is relevant to them and their condition, and 3) that by looking up something on Google they suddenly know more than the medical doctors who are trying to help them.

These beliefs are so widespread that there is a name for them – cyberchondria

More and more, medical professionals are called upon to deal with increasing numbers of "cyberchondriacs," who look up "the newest study" about their condition and demand that their doctors read it and prescribe the treatments it supposedly documents the benefits of for them. And, 99% of the time, the "study" turns out to be either non-existent or so poorly designed that it's worthless – and worse – dangerous, because it leads people who read about it to believe in a "miracle cure" that doesn't really exist.

At MTV IR, where our medical specialty is the treatment of cancer, we run into this problem all the time, and we patiently explain to people that the "miracle cure for cancer" they read about on the Internet is 1) not proven, and 2) for an entirely different type of cancer than the one they have. And the most fascinating thing is that some people actually think we're lying to them when we have to tell them that the "miracle cure" they found was disproven years ago.

We understand – having a serious disease is terrible, and people want hope

As specialists in liver cancer treatment options in North Texas, one of the things we pride ourselves on is staying abreast of the latest discoveries in the fight against the diseases we treat. NO ONE would be more pleased than us to find a true "miracle cure" for liver cancer or the many other oncological diseases we treat. If such treatments were to be proven and authorized for medical use, we would be the first to recommend them to our patients.

But sadly almost all such "miracle cures" turn out to present false hope to people, not hope founded in objective fact. And we have to tell patients who find these false hopes the truth. We don't blame them for wanting to find something that can make their cancer go away overnight, but until such treatments are proven to exist, we have to recommend the best interventional radiology procedures we know about. Many of them would have been considered "miracle cures" only a few years ago, back in the days when only invasive surgeries were seen as viable treatments for cancer.

So continue reading the Internet for information…but don't believe everything you read there

At MTV IR, we actually like it when our patients educate themselves on their conditions and the procedures used to treat them. That's why we write the informative articles about these things on our website. So if you find something interesting somewhere else on the Internet that you feel is relevant to your condition and you want to know our opinion about it, just ask us. We'll tell you the truth as we know it. That's just what we do. And that's one of the reasons we're trusted, and considered some of the best interventional radiology doctors in Dallas.

Author Bio: Doctors from one of the Best Cancer Treatment Center in Dallas discuss some of the dangers of researching your symptoms or medical condition online.

For more information: http://www.mtvir.com