Last week, the Medical Insider column explained why doctors have so much trouble managing patients with abdominal pain in the emergency department . Not least among the challenges: the multiplicity of causes of belly pain, the lack of clarity on which tests and treatments are best for which patients, and high cost.
This week we sought solutions — both to these issues and to the questions that readers submitted on TIME.com’s Facebook page over the past week. We put the matter to a roundtable of medical experts — all of whom conduct research or practice emergency medicine firsthand — and what ensued was a lively conversation, an edited version of which appears below.
