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OMERACT 10 Patient Perspective Virtual Campus: valuing health; measuring
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Dear colleagues,FYI (Message from Dr Donald Stanley).Please see belowRegards,Ash
From: donald stanley <[log in to unmask]>
To: Ash Paul <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, 12 August 2012, 16:20
Subject: Re: Can disclosure of financial conflicts of interest actually worsen bias?
Does anyone asking a treatment or diagnostic question distinguish between evidence for justification and evidence for discovery? I am thinking of the distinctions C. S. Peirce made between deduction, induction and abduction? The best we can do is look for justification from Rcts, but neither the optimal treatment decision, nor the correct diagnosis is answered, as pointed out by Ash; the decision is really another sort of intellectual logic not covered by EBM at all. Unless one takes Sackett's admonition to include individual clinical expertise as the answer.Dr. Donald E. StanleyAssociates in Pathology500 West Neck RoadNobleboro, Maine04555 USA207-563-1560From: Ash Paul <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Ash Paul <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sunday, August 12, 2012 11:11 AM
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Can disclosure of financial conflicts of interest actually worsen bias?Dear Huw,I'm really not sure how you can get this endemic problem solved by getting the right evidence to support opinions about the diagnostic and treatment criteria.It's all very good to have the evidence, but then you need the clinicians to actually follow that evidence, and that is something over which your Oxford Handbook has no control whatsoever. That finally boils down to a question of proper regulation by doctors and their professional bodies.Please have a read of this 2007 JAMA article:Ref:Cardiologists' Use of Percutaneous Coronary Interventions for Stable Coronary Artery DiseaseDr Grace Lin, the lead researcher of the 2007 JAMA study, has very recently been quoted in the Washington Post, and I quote:In 2006, a trio of medical professors gathered 20 cardiologists and asked them to discuss a hypothetical heart patient with a blocked artery and no symptoms. Removing the blockage would be riskier and costlier than giving the patient a few pills to take. The professors wanted to know: Would the cardiologists do the procedure?Yes, nearly all of them agreed. Yes, they would.“We had one physician say something I thought was pretty amazing. ‘We know the evidence shows not to do this, but we’re still going to,’ ” recalled Grace Lin, the lead researcher on the study at the University of California San Francisco Medical School. “There were some very strong financial and emotional biases towards going ahead with the procedure.”Ref:Inappropriate heart procedures are expensive and risky. And studies show thousands happen every yearThis article also reveals a medical term which I had never heard before viz oculostenotic reflex:Inappropriate cardiac interventions occur so regularly that a term for it has been coined in the medical literature: “Oculostenotic reflex” is defined as the “‘irresistible temptation” to expand narrowed coronary arteries, despite evidence-based guidelines” suggesting it shouldn’t be done.There is a huge scandal erupting right now in the USA, about USA's largest for for profit private hospital chain HCA, being investigated by Medicare for possible huge fraud relating to unnecessary cardiac work. The New York Times has recently published an article on this emerging scandal.Ref:Hospital Chain Inquiry Cited Unnecessary Cardiac WorkIn my opinion, it is high time for prestigious medical journals like BMJ, JAMA, Lancet and the Archives of Internal Medicine to carry out critical evidence based investigations into the entire field of interventional cardiology.The BMJ has already recently published an extremely critical article on the evidence-base for TAVI, which is now increasing by leaps and bounds in England. Scotland has fortunately resisted the introduction of TAVI, but my clinical colleagues in Scotland tell me that they are coming under huge pressure to introduce it in Scotland as well. The risk for having a stroke one-year post TAVI is also twice that following conventional surgery.They need to do the same for Atrial Appendage Occlusion (AAO) Devices, MitraClips, Renal Denervation for resistant hypertension and Patent Foramen Ovale Closure (PFOC) Devices, A nine year trial recently published on PFOCs has shown that the USA has spent 800 million dollars on this worthless operation, and not only is it not effective, but the mortality rates from this op are significantly higher. Apparently the clinicians were all operating on the basis of the theory of plausibility. This theory of plausibility in medicine needs serious investigating as well.Regards,AshFrom: Huw Llewelyn <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, 11 August 2012, 8:02
Subject: Re: can disclosure of financial conflicts of interest actually worsen bias?
The purpose of evidence is to try to validate opinions to foster informed agreement. We desperately need evidence to support opinions about diagnostic and treatment criteria. I think that this is the main cause of a growing crisis in over-diagnosis and over-treatment, the controversy surrounding the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders being only one example of many. This issue is addressed in the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Diagnosis’s Appendix, ‘Making the diagnostic process evidence-based’ – ‘The logic of diagnostic criteria’, pages 751 to 754. This appendix has been made freely available by Oxford University Press on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/reader/0199232962?_encoding=UTF8&page=41#reader_0199232962. If anyone would like an Adobe copy of this Appendix, please let me know.
Huw Llewelyn
Aberystwyth University