Test in peace

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Abstract
As usual, I finished with a cartoon. It pictured a patient sitting on the examination couch with a spear through his head and the white-coated doctor saying ‘I’m pretty sure I know what the problem is, but just to be sure I’m ordering a battery of tests. ’ It had been a provocative session. I had presented on the exponential increase in test ordering over recent decades, and the consequent costs (real and opportunity) to health systems around the world.1 We had discussed the challenges of managing ‘incidentalomas’, illustrated by a recent patient I had looked after with an angiomyolipoma of the kidney identified as a result of a request for a scrotal ultrasound. No word of a lie. And we debated the very real …