When to seek a second medical opinion for a paediatric patient

Making medical decisions can be difficult, and even more so when it concerns your child and they have been diagnosed with a serious illness, such as childhood cancer, a heart condition or a foetal abnormality during pregnancy. How can you be sure you’re making the right decisions? Are there other treatment options in your country or abroad that your medical team hasn’t considered? 

Seeking a second medical opinion will give you peace of mind by allowing you to confirm a diagnosis or treatment with other specialists, or to explore other options that may not have been considered. Increasingly, you can request a second opinion online, saving you the need to travel. 

Specialists at SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital – Dr Georgia Sarquella Brugada, Head of the Cardiology Department, and Dr Andrés Morales La Madrid, Clinical Director of the SJD Paediatric Cancer Centre Barcelona – explain what it means to seek a second medical opinion and how the process works. 

What is a second medical opinion? 

A paediatric second medical opinion is the opportunity for families to consult another doctor or specialist when their son or daughter has already received a diagnosis or treatment plan, with the aim of confirming, expanding upon or challenging it.  

“In cases of relapse in a cancer patient, it is also a good option to seek a second opinion to find less toxic or more effective treatments, or to assess new possibilities, including clinical trials,” says Dr Andrés Morales.

The final outcome is a second-opinion report containing treatment recommendations from the specialists consulted. 

At SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital, consultations can be carried out online. Once we have received the clinical documentation and medical reports (blood tests, imaging scans, etc.) held by the family, our medical team reviews and analyses the information and discusses the case and possible treatment options with the family via a video conference. Finally, our specialists draw up a second-opinion report, which includes a treatment recommendation.

In any case, seeking a second opinion does not mean that you do not trust the medical team treating your son or daughter; it is simply another tool designed to support the child’s wellbeing, helping to allay any doubts, reinforce confidence in the chosen treatment and ensure that all available options are being explored.

Reasons for seeking a second medical opinion

If you are considering seeking a second medical opinion, there may be many reasons for doing so. Perhaps you want to confirm that the prescribed treatment is the right one, or perhaps you are looking for other options if the treatment your child is receiving is not working as well as you think it should.

Whatever the reason, you have every right to seek reassurance that you are doing the right thing and doing everything possible for your son or daughter’s future. And as doctors, we support second opinions because we want the best for our patients.

We recommend seeking a second opinion if:

• You have been diagnosed with a rare or very serious condition.
• You have not been given a definitive diagnosis, or you disagree with the diagnosis you have received.
• You do not fully understand the diagnosis and the treatment options that have been suggested to you.
• You have been offered various possible treatments and wish to consult other specialists to determine the best option.
• You are not tolerating the prescribed treatment as expected.
• You believe that the necessary resources to treat your diagnosed condition are not available in your country.
• Your primary healthcare team considers that surgery is not an option. Please bear in mind that there may be other centres with more advanced technology or healthcare professionals who are able to carry out the procedure.
• You feel overwhelmed by the situation and want greater certainty to make the right decisions.

“A second opinion allows you to reconsider an initial diagnosis and the proposed treatment options, and to explore innovative alternatives,” says Dr Georgia Sarquella. “Sometimes, a second opinion may even lead to a more extensive investigation of the patient’s family history if there is a familial component to the condition.”

Before seeking a second opinion, we recommend that you consult your current medical team. They will be able to advise you on which specialist centre to contact or which specialists can offer you a well-founded second opinion.

Steps to obtain a second opinion at the SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital

SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital is one of the most renowned centres in Europe and worldwide for paediatric diseases and pregnancy-related conditions. Here are the steps to follow if you wish to request a second medical opinion from us:

1. Gather all the patient’s medical information, such as blood test results, medical test results, reports from their referring medical team, current medication and treatments, etc.
2. Identify the type of specialist you need; this may be within the same speciality or a different one to provide a fresh perspective.
3. Request the second opinion online via our contact form. Upon receiving your request, our International Department will contact you to ask for your current medical report and any supplementary tests (imaging, laboratory tests, etc.). It is very important that the reports and test results are recent so that our specialists can assess the case properly.
4. Once the documentation has been reviewed, we will discuss the case and its possible diagnosis with you via a video conference. We recommend that you prepare a written summary setting out the specific concerns you wish to address, the main symptoms and their progression, and any specific questions that the initial diagnosis has not answered.
5. Finally, one of our specialists will draw up a second-opinion report, which will include a treatment recommendation.

Please note that the online second opinion service from SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital does not include the carrying out of tests. Where there is no prior diagnosis or treatment proposal, it is possible to request an initial medical consultation with our specialists.

Take your time to compare and consider the opinions

Once you have received the second-opinion report, we at SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital recommend that you take your time to consider the information available to you – both ours and that provided by your usual medical team. If the two opinions agree, you will feel more confident about the diagnosis.

If the opinions differ, you can compare the two recommendations, discuss them with your doctor and use all the information to make a decision. You do not have to decide straight away; you can take as long as you need.

Why you shouldn’t delay in seeking a second opinion

When it comes to serious paediatric conditions, the sooner a treatment decision is made, the better the outcome will be. That is why, at SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital, we recommend that, if you have any doubts or questions for which you are not receiving satisfactory answers, you should consider seeking a second opinion.

A second medical opinion is one of the best tools at your disposal for making the best decisions about your son or daughter’s health and feeling more confident about the treatment to be followed.