Friends,
I got opportunity to speak in FIRVA 2019(Forum Of Interventional Radiologist in Vascular Anomaly) in Vancouver, Canada. My talk was on vascular malformation. I am sharing my thoughts on vascular malformation meet & rocky mountain hiking .
It's a great feeling to share Indian experience with 250 Interventional Radiologist from different parts of the world.
We went to Joffre lake national park in rocky mountain for hiking. Joffre's lake has greenish blue water & surrounding pine tree makes it spectacular.
I love this quote from Nasim Taleb's book BLACK SWAN " In theory there is no difference between theory & practical , but in practical there is difference between these two ". In this meet, there is common consensus, that book will show you how to treat vascular malformation, but when you apply that knowledge practically , outcome is different in each patient....And negative outcome is never reported in most of the theoretical literature ....it should be learnt in such kind of meet.
Let's have a look on our school & college education system. School will ask you to learn from one chapter of any subject & ask a question from it...so they teach you how to deal with certainty. In math also, formulas are fixed, one has to apply formula to solve problem......so there is very little component of uncertainty in theory. But when one enters into practical life, there is always uncertainty. How to choose business? , how to choose life partner?, In medical field which treatment gives best results to patient? ....everywhere is uncertainty. Unfortunately our theoretical educational system doesn't teach us how to deal with uncertainty?.
Now next question is how to deal with uncertainty? Uncertainty is best dealt by understanding probability of negative outcome. If negative outcome probability is more than we don't do that thing. Suppose while treating vascular malformation with absolute ethanol, every single drop of absolute ethanol will increase chances of systemic complication. So never go beyond safe dose of absolute ethanol to reduce negative outcome. One can stop anytime & restart again rather than going into wrong direction. This is main message from my talk in meeting that we are dealing with uncertainty so take a risk till negative outcome probability is less & for that use small small dose of absolute ethanol to reduce complication.
Practical knowledge on uncertainty will lead you on successful path of life.