After the procedures, Chris and I talked to Fernando for a while. After giving us a fairly extensive tour of the colonoscopy room, we started talking about treatment choices. Fernando mentioned that in some cases, colonoscopy treatments are forgone even when they may be beneficial. As an example, as people age, they sometimes get diverticulums, which are pouches formed in the large intestine by stools that sit there for extended periods of time. Over time, these turn into actual pockets. If an endoscopic tube enters one of these pouches, they can rupture, releasing the contents of the large intestine into the peritoneum, leading to high chances of infection and death. In those cases, it is pretty obvious that a colonoscopy would be risky. However, Fernando also mentioned that if the patient is old and probably close to death, why treat him/her, and risk complications and death? I didn't know how to feel about this, because I got the impression that if a procedure was necessary, it would not be performed because of the possibility of failure. On the surface of course, I understand the reasoning; if the risks outweigh the benefits, there is good reason not to do a procedure. The ultimate call would be up to the physician, but it seems like a subjective decision to me; you really can't be sure about the probability of failure beforehand, can you? All you can do is guess, and is that worth someone's life?
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