How to Manage Uncertainty About a Treatment Plan

Making decisions about your health can be difficult. How can you be confident about which treatment plan is best? A Keck Medicine of USC expert shares his advice.

Ram Kiran Alluri, MD, orthopaedic surgeon, USC Spine Center

When there is a lack of trust in a treatment plan, the best thing you can do is get a second opinion. If the second opinion aligns with the first doctor’s recommendation, then it can help give you more confidence that the right course of action is being implemented.

If the second opinion vastly diverges, then it can give you more information about options, and you can decide what works best for you.

In spine surgery especially, there are many different ways to treat the same problem.

A patient’s comfort with a treatment plan is probably the most critical aspect of successful patient care.

Ram Kiran Alluri, MD

At a multidisciplinary clinic, like the USC Spine Center, you can get opinions and consultations with practitioners from a variety of specialties. It is very common for me to send my patients to get a second opinion from one of my neurosurgery colleagues or to get an opinion regarding nonoperative treatment from my interventional colleagues.

A patient’s comfort with a treatment plan is probably the most critical aspect of successful patient care. The best thing to do if you are not comfortable with the first treatment plan offered to you is to tell your doctor about your concerns and seek more information from multiple sources.

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Mollie Barnes

Mollie Barnes is a writer for Keck Medicine of USC.

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