Patient Safety Blog

After his newborn twins were given near-fatal doses of the blood-thinner heparin, actor Dennis Quaid testified in front of Congress defending consumers' rights to file suit against pharmaceutical companies.

From the article:

Beginning with the Bush administration, the Food and Drug Administration has stepped into suits on the side of defendant pharmaceutical companies, arguing that federal regulation of drugs pre-empts state suits.

The article also reminds us that thousands of people die each year from medical errors. Lawsuits like the one Quaid is filing against Baxter Healthcare Inc. (the maker of the heparin) are one way of holding those who make these errors accountable.

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Posted In: Medications

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Tara Parker-Pope of the NY Times has an article on how more than half of the writers of the DSM-IV--the Diagnostic and Statisical Manual of Mental Disorders--have financial links to the drug industry.

The DSM is the most commonly used handbook of psychiatric disorders. Clearly these financial links suggest a conflict of interest.

From the article:

It’s not the first time the D.S.M. has been linked to the drug industry. Tufts University researchers in 2006 reported that 95 — or 56 percent — of 170 experts who worked on the 1994 edition of the manual had at least one monetary relationship with a drug maker in the years from 1989 to 2004. The percentage was higher — 100 percent in some cases — for experts who worked on sections of the manual devoted to severe mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, the study found.

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Oral contraceptives significantly reduce risks of ovarian cancer in women, says a new large-scale study. The pill has been linked to reduction in breast cancer rates as well, but not so large as the reduction in ovarian cancer rates.

The risk reduction persists up to thirty years after a woman stops taking the pill, although it declines with time. The risk reduction is also stronger in women who take it for long periods of time.

Furthermore, as the linked article says:

The proportional risk reduction for every 5 years of use was 29 per cent up to 10 years of stopping use, 19 per cent for 10 - 19 years after stopping, and 15 per cent for 20 - 29 years after stopping.

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Posted In: Cancer , Medications

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Out of nineteen industrialized nations, the U.S. has the most deaths that could have been prevented by access to timely, effective medical care.

Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine performed the study, looking at deaths before the age of seventy-five caused by numerous diseases and complications. They found that France performed the best by this measure--though France, and other countries that ranked higher than the U.S., spends less money on health care than the U.S. does.

Not only was the U.S. the worst in these rankings, but we Americans are also ranked four places lower than we were in the last study (which covered 1997 and 1998). We are getting worse and spending more money.

Posted by Patrick A. Malone | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: General , Medical Error , Medications , Standard of Care--Hospitals , Surgery

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Anti-psychotic drugs such as Haldol and Risperdal were developed to treat schizophrenia, but have recently been used for much broader purposes. They have been used to treat aggression in people suffering from everything from attention-deficit disorder to depression to the intellectually handicapped.

A new study finds, however, that these drugs are no more effective than placebos in treating aggression in the mentally disabled. This suggests that the drugs are being abused, and should be prescribed less often.

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Posted In: Medications

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A thirty-year analysis shows that anemia drugs produced by Amgen Inc. and Johnson & Johnson raise the risk of leukemia incidence.

The following drugs are implicated in this study: Aranesp and Epogen (by Amgen Inc.), and Procrit (by Johnson & Johnson).

In addition, the steroid danazol was linked to higher risk of leukemia.

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Shockingly, nursing homes having been giving elderly residents anti-psychotic drugs--not to combat actual psychosis, but rather to quiet symptoms of Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia and make the patients more docile and controllable.

This overuse of anti-psychotics is so rampant that it accounts for why Medicaid has recently spent more money on anti-psychotics than on any other type of pharmaceuticals.

This is not wholly due to malicious intent on the part of the nursing homes, but also on the fact that federal insurance programs are more willing to give money for drugs rather than for the extra staff that are needed to care for elderly patients with dementia.

This report highlights how medical institutions can harm the most vulnerable patients by giving them medications they do not require in order to meet economic or administrative goals.

Posted by Patrick A. Malone | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: Medications , Standard of Care--Hospitals

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Acute sinusitis is often treated with antibiotics, and possibly also a topical steroid.

However, a recent study found this common treatment to be no more effective than a placebo.

Commenters on the study have noted that there may be some patients for whom antibiotics might help, but there is no reliable way for a clinician to tell those patients from the others.

It is possible that this result is due to the greater level of resistance to antibiotics that has resulted from increased use of antibiotics over the last few years.

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Posted In: Medications

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