Tag: believing in treatments that don’t work
MRI and X-Ray Often Worse than Useless for Back Pain
Reading through this article I went from peeved to enraged. This has been in the literature for decades and yet, STILL, people consider an MRI the gold standard and demand it. Doctors sort of have to oblige. And yet imaging, Xray AND MRI lead to higher disability for a number of reasons. Back pain does…
Read MoreNumbers Needed to Treat
Numbers needed to treat. This is a crucial concept. It illustrates brilliantly the concept of First, Do No Harm, which also happens to be the title of the first chapter of my writing project “Deep Resilience”. This graphic comes from this excellent article with the even more excellent title when evidence says no but doctors…
Read MoreStents and Bypass Surgery No Better than Medications for Narrowed Arteries in Patients Without Angina
” This is far from the first study to suggest that stents and bypass are overused. But previous results have not deterred doctors, who have called earlier research on the subject inconclusive and the design of the trials flawed. Previous studies did not adequately control for risk factors, like LDL cholesterol, that might have…
Read MoreExercise as Effective as Surgery for Knee Pain
I’m glad to see surgery subjected to meaningful control studies. That’s the standard for Acupuncture research except we also have the additional burden of adding sham acupuncture as a study arm. Surgical studies, for some reason, don’t need add a sham arm. Exercise therapy versus arthroscopic partial meniscectomy for degenerative meniscal tear in middle aged…
Read MoreKnee Surgery for Meniscus Repair No Better Than Placebo
Of course, surgery is one of the most powerful placebos that exist. But the studies that have actually looked at placebo surgery are vanishingly rare. So bravo that they looked, and shame on surgeons that they so seldom scrutinize the real value of their procedures. THURSDAY, Dec. 26, 2013 (HealthDay News) — Improvements in knee…
Read MoreExercise, Not Surgery, for Back Pain
Perhaps surgery is not the greatest idea for back pain??? Those of us who provide alternatives would heartily agree, since we end up seeing many of the post operative patients who are still in pain. From npr. Groopman, a Harvard cancer specialist who writes about medicine for The New Yorker, wanted the problem fixed…
Read MoreUnreliable Research Can Be Deadly
So depressing. Another story about a drug that would cause the problem that it was trying to solve, in this case heart attacks. The company who developed it hid the hazards. November 19, 2013 Doctors Say Heart Drug Raised Risk of an Attack By ANDREW POLLACK Cardiologists have accused a small drug company of withholding…
Read MoreSanity on Statins: Part 4? or is it 5?
Lots of news about the latest recommendations for patients with high cholesterol vis a vis drug regimens. At first I thought it was good news, but now, reading the editorial by Rita Redberg, I realize that these recommendations could actually WIDEN the use of statins. I will leave it to Redberg and Abramson to…
Read MoreQuestioning Steroids for Back Pain
So a new study shows that injecting epidural saline is just as good as injecting steroids for low back pain. I think this should be a rather big deal. This study was painstakingly done reviewing all appropriate studies to date, even taking into account publication bias. The full study here.Epidural_Injections_for_Spinal_Pain__A_Systematic.31 A handy review of what…
Read MoreMaking the Invisible Visible
We all know it’s hard to prove a negative. The term “Absence Blindness” refers to a concept that when you prevent something from happening (absence) it is difficult to perceive it. In our culture, there is more willingness to deal with something once it happens (Hurricane Sandy relief), then to prevent it from happening…
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