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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/upshot/the-right-to-know-that-an-operation-is-next-to-useless.html
Here is my comment, we'll see if they post it. I would encourage others to comment as well. Liberal decision makers do read the Times.
Here we go again.... it gets so tiring fighting the liberal crusade against procedural medicine, which NYT is wholly a participant in. There is a war going on here that no one talks about. It's about population based medicine vs individualized care. Those who pay for care would love to go population based. It seems pretty easy to show no benefit for a procedure when you try to study its use over a wide population base. All you need to do is tweak the methods, or the patient selection- and voila! No benefit. Take the vertebroplasty study for example. Those of us in the field know the procedure works like a miracle in well selected patients- those with pain severe enough they might choose not to participate in a study where one possibility is being assigned to a control group, and suffering until the investigators let them cross over to the treatment arm. Look at the sham intervention they chose- blockade of the facet joints around the fracture. Patients whose pain was mild enough that they signed up for the study in the first place might have been suffering from joint pain instead of fracture pain- which was treated with the sham procedure! To anyone inclined to believe these anti-procedure articles published by the NYT, I suggest you review the original studies with someone knowledgable in the field who can shine a critical eye on this scam.
Here is my comment, we'll see if they post it. I would encourage others to comment as well. Liberal decision makers do read the Times.
Here we go again.... it gets so tiring fighting the liberal crusade against procedural medicine, which NYT is wholly a participant in. There is a war going on here that no one talks about. It's about population based medicine vs individualized care. Those who pay for care would love to go population based. It seems pretty easy to show no benefit for a procedure when you try to study its use over a wide population base. All you need to do is tweak the methods, or the patient selection- and voila! No benefit. Take the vertebroplasty study for example. Those of us in the field know the procedure works like a miracle in well selected patients- those with pain severe enough they might choose not to participate in a study where one possibility is being assigned to a control group, and suffering until the investigators let them cross over to the treatment arm. Look at the sham intervention they chose- blockade of the facet joints around the fracture. Patients whose pain was mild enough that they signed up for the study in the first place might have been suffering from joint pain instead of fracture pain- which was treated with the sham procedure! To anyone inclined to believe these anti-procedure articles published by the NYT, I suggest you review the original studies with someone knowledgable in the field who can shine a critical eye on this scam.