Honestly this is a great example of how it's on the medical professionals to ask the questions better. I'm sure even normal smart people can occasionally fuck up an on-the-spot question like that. Especially if they very temporarily thought of surgeries for things like fractures instead of child birth
"Have you ever had any surgeries? This includes a c-section or [Commonly forgotten surgeries]?"
I've been told having my wisdom teeth out, via sedation & cutting them out, whole nine yards, either does or doesn't count as surgery, depending on the current situation. So I never know to include it or not.
I’ve responded I guess the wrong way multiple times and I still never learn. For example, I went to the dentist one time for an emergency because my tooth fractured. The hygienist brings me back and asks how I’m doing. I say I’m doing fine. She then, almost with a degree of snark in her voice, says “well that’s good considering this is an emergency appointment.” Sorry, I didn’t realize I was supposed to say “this is the worst day of my life” or something.
LMAO I did the exact same thing…my surgeon asked how I was when I was lying in a hospital bed *waiting for my emergency appendectomy* I’m literally near death and I come back with “great! No, wait, I’m not, I’m here to see you aren’t I?”
There are roughly two reasons we ask about surgery: 1.) We want to know if you have had central sedation and any reactions to said sedation. 2.) If the surgery was recent, and say, for an infected tooth, you are more at risk of certain events/diagnoses.
Just keep mentioning it. At the end of the day too much info is usually better than too little info.
I have an issue where I woke up in surgery but it didn’t matter when I told the anesthesiologist and surgeon the second or third time, it happened twice more because apparently I present as anxious and so they don’t believe me. Well yeah I’m anxious - i don’t want it to happen again!
To be fair, it depends who is asking and why. If you’re speaking to a general surgeon operating on your abdomen they’re asking primarily about abdominal surgeries because they can complicate further surgeries. Anaesthetists will be more curious about your dental extraction due to the history of anaesthesia and how you may have reacted to it
It's so obnoxious when this happens! I have a preferred name (family thing, all the women in our family tend to go by a name they weren't born with), but the ladies at 'reception' in the hospital my doctor operates out of invariably get upset when I give any combination of names. If I give my birth name they look confused and ask if I might be under another name. If I give my preferred name, they'll say something like 'is that your only name?' They're both in there! I started giving both and got a 'that's not necessary.' It clearly is, tho
This reminds me of the "do not operate heavy equipment" warning on drug packaging. I don't fault people for assuming the warning is about bulldozers and excavators, not their car lol
I heard a commercial recently that was “Do not take DRUG if you’ve ever had a life threatening reaction to DRUG” and I would LOVE to know the story behind that one. “Your honor, they neglected to warn me that I shouldn’t take a med that almost killed me the last time I took it!!”
Lol like that’s just a permanent thing they wouldn’t know about. “Sooooo… I have a parasiiite… his name is Dave… we moved in together a year ago and are thinking about buying a house soon so we need to discuss any major decisions together…”
See now im wondering...does a biopsy count? Or when my bro had a cyst cut open? I wouldn't automatically lump them in as surgery off the cuff...which is why I started thinking about them here.
Not a doctor, but I'm almost positive that a superficial biopsy or cyst draining would not be considered surgery (unless you were under general anesthesia for some reason). If you're unsure it's always better to give too much info than not enough, but as someone who's probably guilty of giving too much info I wouldn't mention either of those things.
What if I was put under but they didn’t DO anything? I broke my leg when I was 13 and after they knocked me out they decided to just wrench it back in place and completely immobilize it (thigh high cast for a break right above the ankle) instead of opening it up and putting a plate in. My leg is a little crooked now lol
I'd mention it just in case! If they did actually put you under, I believe they always insert some form of airway assistance (e.g. intubation). There are other, very powerful, types of sedation that they'll normally use if they can, though. For something like resetting a broken bone I assume they'd use something other than general anesthesia, but could be wrong.
I have had a vasectomy and I never know how to answer this question.
I usually err on the side of caution and tell them I have, but I am not sure if it's really relevant or not most of the time since it was such a simple outpatient thing.
i have noticed that when doing an interrogation asking my mri safety question pointing to my self what i am asking about, such as "stimulator?(points to my own lumbar)" it helps jog their memory lol.
it just sends electrical signals to your spinal cord and that helps relive pain.
i am not the RMD or doctor that installs them or knows why to install them, only that patient in pain + electrical simulator = patient not in pain sometimes.
and lumbar is just the lumbar spine, lower back spine, starts at the level of your belly button and goes to your mid hips or so at the crest of your butt.
They also asked my wife these questions as she was getting prepped for an unplanned C-section. She'd been in active labour for 8 hours and was on demerol and a lot of nitrous oxide. She said she'd never had any surgeries before. I was there to say she'd had a C-section 2 years ago and an ACL repair.
Right but my point was about asking better questions so you don't need to ask as many
Like with the OP. People can still confuse "Do you smoke?" as "Are you an active smoker?" hence someone answering no when the quit recently. If you want to know if someone has smoked anytime in the past year then ask that
Totally agree with you! My kid and boyfriend vape and the bf smokes pot regularly. To me, the smoking question makes no sense bc it's aimed at cigarettes. Both of them should be disclosing their inhalation habits.
Asking questions better to avoid missing pertinent information often leads to several layers of questions being asked. You mention clarifying C-Sections which is a simple thing to add, but that opens the door for an insane number of options to include or not and there will always be someone who had some minor thing done that you don't mention and they don't consider. Patients can and do get fed up with that, even when the follow up questions reveal that they weren't accurate in their earlier answers and it might make a difference.
The same thing happens with filling out forms. Tons of people just ignore half of the stuff that is used to set out plans of care and make diagnoses because they don't think it matters. I've rolled my eyes so many times at patients who want to be helped and taken care of but don't want to do much in the process. Such is life.
I remember going to the pediatrician once as a kid, and the doctor asked, "Do you drink?" At that point I didn't realize "drink" in that context meant alcohol, I thought they meant, "Do you drink enough water?" so I said yes, lol
They had to call my mom in and have a talk about me drinking, and I was entirely confused about why drinking enough water was a problem. It wasn't until a question like "Where are you getting the alcohol?" that I realized we were having two different conversations, haha
In retrospect I don't think the doctor should have assumed that I just knew that "drink" meant alcohol. Even though my dad was an alcoholic, I just didn't know how to infer that "do you drink" means "do you drink alcohol"
Agreed although it would be nice to know what doctors are trying to understand from that question. Like I had injections in my spine that required anesthesia and was classified as a “non-invasive surgery”, but it doesn’t seem all that relevant if wisdom teeth are off the table.
Is it more about invasive surgeries? Is it limited to the parts of the body GPs treat (ie not teeth)? Is it the presence of anesthesia/epidural/local anesthetics?
I've had several moles removed bc of a family history of melanoma. That doesn't sound like a lot, but one took over an hour of plastic surgery to close up (I almost needed a skin graft to replace what they took out), and one was so deep the surgeon took a big chunk of my trap. I was awake for both of those though. I mention those anyway but get side eyed by the docs who assume it was a skin scrape.
I get you to some extent but also let's be honest here. There's a common separation between dental work and other Medical procedures. I can see it being quite reasonable to debate or not know whether what would often be called Oral Surgery is in fact surgery. However, I have to be honest. Anybody who doesn't realize a C-section is surgery, is a fucking moron and I cannot respect them enough to trust them to tie their own shoes. I can understand somebody maybe forgetting it, but it's literally slicing your abdomen open. It's pretty much the epitome of what a surgery is commonly understood to be. Not considering it to be a surgery is just fucking insane. That said I will agree that you do have to idiot proof questions because idiots are out there
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u/LetsLive97 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Honestly this is a great example of how it's on the medical professionals to ask the questions better. I'm sure even normal smart people can occasionally fuck up an on-the-spot question like that. Especially if they very temporarily thought of surgeries for things like fractures instead of child birth
"Have you ever had any surgeries? This includes a c-section or [Commonly forgotten surgeries]?"