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America's Doctors Are Performing Expensive Procedures That Don't Work (vox.com)
"The proportion of medical procedures unsupported by evidence may be nearly half," writes a professor of public policy at Brown University. An anonymous reader quotes his article in Vox:
The recent news that stents inserted in patients with heart disease to keep arteries open work no better than a placebo ought to be shocking. Each year, hundreds of thousands of American patients receive stents for the relief of chest pain, and the cost of the procedure ranges from $11,000 to $41,000 in US hospitals. But in fact, American doctors routinely prescribe medical treatments that are not based on sound science.
The stent controversy serves as a reminder that the United States struggles when it comes to winnowing evidence-based treatments from the ineffective chaff. As surgeon and health care researcher Atul Gawande observes, "Millions of people are receiving drugs that aren't helping them, operations that aren't going to make them better, and scans and tests that do nothing beneficial for them, and often cause harm"... Estimates vary about what fraction of the treatments provided to patients is supported by adequate evidence, but some reviews place the figure at under half.
The stent controversy serves as a reminder that the United States struggles when it comes to winnowing evidence-based treatments from the ineffective chaff. As surgeon and health care researcher Atul Gawande observes, "Millions of people are receiving drugs that aren't helping them, operations that aren't going to make them better, and scans and tests that do nothing beneficial for them, and often cause harm"... Estimates vary about what fraction of the treatments provided to patients is supported by adequate evidence, but some reviews place the figure at under half.
Duh, there is no money in actually healing people. Take the profit out of medicine and it will start actually work again.
Stents WORK for heart disease - that’s proven and the story stupidly misleads it for click bait (and slashdot editors happily repeat)
The study in question showed that stents don’t necessarily reduce heart pain in patients with narrowed arteries which is contradictory to the theories about how heart pain/disease work.
Regardless a clogged artery will still kill you and a stent resolves that problem!
More piss poor science “reporting”
This simply isn't the real problem.
Doctors in the US over-treat illnesses, use outdated and ineffective treatments and generally run up the costs of medicine.
The above statement is based on my wife's treatment in the USA and in the UK.
In my own case, I had a problem for which one of the treatments is surgery. I was referred to a hand specialist who only discussed the surgical option with me. When I asked about the alternative treatment that I had discovered using Google, his response was that he didn't do that treatment and I would have to see another doctor. Had I not researched it for my self, I would never have known that there was an alternative. That's on top of the fact that I had to pay for a completely useless consultation with the hand surgeon.
Summary, even if you have good insurance in the USA, you may not be getting the best treatment.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The only way to fix that is to give Doctors the ability to have the case dismissed if they show that they treated the patient according to evidence based practice.
You sound like an absolute cunt.
It's approved, but the first doctor I consulted about my hand did not mention it as an option. That's my point: medicine in the USA is frequently bad.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Clinton called one third of Trump supporters, not all Republicans, "a basket of deplorables".
I think this is quantitatively and qualitatively accurate.