Archive for category In the Journals
The journals in 5 minutes, ideal for busy med students
Posted by admin in In the Journals, Medical News on December 14th, 2009
JAMA – High Flow oxygen for cluster headaches (describes as worse than giving birth) seems beneficial. 80% relief in 15mins on 02 as opposed to 20% without.
- Soy foods contain phytoestrogens, does this increase the risk of brease cancer? Apparently not, they may even be beneficial. Lower breast cancer recurrence in those with high soy diets
NEJM – Cangrelor an p2y12 inhibitor is no more affective than clopidogrel in patients with acs who were undergoing PCI. In fact, the drug was associated with more bleeding.
- Dabigatran, a direct thrombin inhibitor was shown to be as effective as warfarin for acute venous thromboembolism, with the added benefit that monitoring is not needed.
BMJ – (christmas ed) Encouraging listening to Nellie the elephant while training cpr substantially increases the number of lay people executing the correct rate of compressions
ANNALS OF INTERNAL MED – Should low dose aspirin be continued in patients with cardiovascular disease that develop co-existant bleeding peptic ulcer? In short yes, although more risk of bleeding, mortality is reduced overall. More research needed.
Experiment on dying patients for cash… $1560 to be precise
Posted by admin in In the Journals, Medical News on March 8th, 2009
A recent article in the BMJ showed that canadian doctors had admitted being paid excessive amounts to submit the patients in to experimental cancer trials.
One doctor reported being paid as much as $1560 per patient he/she submitted. While the cancer patient desperately looking for a new treatment may be overjoyed to get into a clinical trial, we must ask whether the doctor can be trusted to have chosen the experimental trial most likely to benefit the patient. Especially when putting the patient to different trials will affect the amount of money the doctor is paid.
This news comes under a wake of growing concerns about the financial relationships between drug companies, doctors and medical schools.
Just recently Harvard medical students vowed to expose the true relationships in the faculty and put an end to underhand dealing.
So far Ive been rather negative towards the drug industry, however as I’m sure you know, they produce drugs which often turn out to be very useful. Also a lot of the cash flowing into manipulating med students and doctors minds ends up improving their medical teaching. Surely a good doctor should be able to see the wood from the tree’s and act ethically regard less of the financial incentives.
