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Indeed, beware the confusion of association with causation. One of problems with “big data” at the moment is that a lot pf people haven’t yet quite got hold of the strengths and limitations. Despite this I heartily agree that having well structured electronic records will be a very powerful tool. We just have to educate the users in how to create them reliably. Cheers, Geoff Mail signed using GPGMail Public key available from hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net > On 10 Sep 2018, at 23:39, Ian Trimble <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > Interesting. > > Plenty of anecdotal / defensive rebuttals in the comments, I note. > > Not an RCT of course, so perhaps the conditions that led to patients having surgery also affected their long-term outcomes? > > But it would certainly be difficult to deduce any benefit from surgery. > > > Trims > > >> On 10 Sep 2018, at 17:56, Trefor Roscoee <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> >> When I was teaching Clinical Informatics in the late 90s, I came up with an example of clinical questions that could only be answered when electronic health records were universal or at least covered over half of a population. >> >> One question was "does having tonsillectomy increase your risk of long term health problems?" I postulated that the removal of the lymphoid tissue could alter immunity or increase risk of infection. >> >> It seems it does https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/kids-who-get-their-tonsils-removed-have-substantially-greater-rates-of-illness-later-in-life/ >> >> Dr Trefor Roscoe FFCI >> Medical Information Consultant >> Locum General Practitioner > > > To unsubscribe from the GP-UK list, click the following link: > https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=GP-UK&A=1 > ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the GP-UK list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=GP-UK&A=1