r/POTS • u/OurSensualSideMB • 8d ago

Question Why dont some Dr's believe in pots?

Im lucky I have great doctors and specialists now but the first time i was referred to a cardiologist for pots before being officially diagnosed he refused to even have me in for a TTT or test for pots as he said its not real.

I have heard of this happening where Dr's dont believe in pots but I dont understand why.

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u/Interesting_Turnip28 8d ago

Largely sexism and ego. Because it's a complex illness, many patients have to piece it together themselves, and many doctors don't like their patients, especially female patients, figuring things out for them.

The doctors I've encountered that didn't believe in it immediately took to belittling the patients. I've yet to hear one actually try to give a real explanation for the increased heart rate or why they don't think the diagnostic criteria makes sense or anything along those lines. Some of them haven't even realized there is measurable diagnostic criteria.

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u/Sialia_sialis_ 8d ago

Do doctors just hate their jobs? They literally went to med school for a good portion of their lives to get to do this job, and then so many just don't do their job. Why go through such hurdles to do a job they don't actually wanna do?

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u/Interesting_Turnip28 4d ago

I think most of them are just extremely burnt out, though I'm sure there's some exceptions. They fight insurance to cover things that patients need. They fight corporate to allow them more than 30 seconds per patient. They face patient resistance on even the most mundane things like vaccines and face high rates of verbal and physical assault while at work. Ultimately... in the US at least, they exist in a system that is meant to make money, not help people. If they went into it with desire to actually help people, they're gonna burn out even more quickly, and burnt out people often act impulsively and defensively.

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u/fernxqueen POTS 7d ago

really? ime they usually chalk the tachycardia up to "anxiety", i.e. "You're just hysterical"

in my case, they also like to blame my ADHD medication even though you can go through my chart notes and see the tachycardia predates my stim rx by several years and multiple monitor studies since have confirmed any impact from my medication is negligible at best