Blog 20: Exit Interview

What is your essential question and answers? What is your best answer and why?

What is the most effective treatment for a patient suffering from Coronary Artery Disease?

1. By making lifestyle changes regarding personal nutrition which focus on low sodium and cholesterol intake
2. Undergo an Angioplasty procedure by placing a stent in the narrowed artery to widen it
3. Undergo a Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting Surgery to graft a substitute blood vessel into your heart, re-routing blood flow around the clogged artery

Best answer is Answer 1, "By making lifestyle changes regarding personal nutrition which focus on low sodium and cholesterol intake" because I believe naturally, the latter two answers eventually fall back to the first. Coronary Artery Disease is chiefly caused by poor health habits (Consuming an excess amount of cholesterol/sodium) which answer one covers. Answers 2 and 3 are procedures that utilise non-natural equipment (meaning tools like scalpels and catheters).

What process did you take to arrive at this answer?
I arrived at this answer through research. My findings about the causes of Coronary Artery Disease came down to the effectiveness of taking care of your body. As my mentor has said, "Your body is the one thing you have for the rest of your life." Answers 2 and 3 ultimately end with the doctor telling the patient to eat well, exercise, and to just live healthier; they are also short-term solutions compared to eating healthier, which It was this realisation that led the way for Answer 1 to be my best answer.

What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?
At first when I researched, I hadn't a clue what I was reading. Studies with abstracts, results and whatnot seemed overly complicated. Words like paclitaxel and percutaneous popped up with little to no context–these are the types of words that I knew I had to familiarise myself with so I could fully understand the article. Focussing on this, Google is a really handy tool. Whenever an obscure word popped up, I simply searched for it. But this impacted my research in more ways than one. Now, I'm able to read these journal articles with a better understanding than I had before. Repetition of particular words and phrases stuck with me. In addition to that, when I search up a word, I [fortunately] do not stop at the definition. I'll use Wikipedia as an example. For complicated jargon that's widely used in the medical field, Wikipedia does have a fairly simple summary as to what it is. But that is all it is: a summary. I have found myself at times grasping for more information either by clicking through more articles or more recently, scrolling through the numerous references at the bottom of the page.

What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
My two most significant sources are the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and my Mentor. The NCBI has given me a load of information. While at first I looked at definitions and explanations on WebMD and similar sites, I eventually moved on to more academia-focussed archives (like NCBI). Similar sites such as The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) were popular archives for medical journals that I frequent. 

But a problem I faced many times (as reiterated in my iSearch Paper) was the fact that many articles, particularly more recent studies cost money. $33 for a single pdf file isn't worth it from my position. I'm not doing a full-fledged study, so spending money is not my preference. Fortunately, sites like Reddit have smaller forums called subreddits where users sometimes give out these articles for free through file sharing websites. I believe it's a small duty of resourcefulness that I find these links.

My mentor has helped me out as well. He is a board certified internist with many years of experience. I will admit people may not be as thorough as articles devoted to the topic, but my mentor, as a trained professional knows an incredible amount of information. He can literally go on for hours on his clinical studies on Diabetes. I've come to him for answers and his influence and knowledge led me to my EQ and subsequent answers.