Do Specialists Slant Their Recommendations for Treatment?

Most patients assume that their physician will give them unbiased recommendations about the best treatment for their condition. A new study, however, suggests that specialists tend to promote treatments they provide over other therapies that may be equally good. A study of Medicare records for more than 85,000 men with localized prostate cancer showed that the treatment the men received was largely determined by the specialist they had seen. The authors recommend that patients get a second opinion, especially from a different perspective, to consider the range of treatments.
[Archives of Internal Medicine, March 8, 2010]