Research Studies

January 16, 2019

Obesity and poverty may stall 25-year decline in cancer deaths, experts warn

Cancer hasn’t gotten knocked out of its spot as Americans’ No. 2 killer, but health officials have delivered some good news about the disease that once was considered irreversible in its lethal course: Cancer deaths rates have fallen now for a quarter of a century.

The American Cancer Society, pointing to 1991 as a peak year, says that death rates from the disease declined by 27 percent, “meaning more than 2.6 million deaths [were] avoided between 1991 and 2016.”

Still, 1.7 million Americans likely will be diagnosed with cancer this year, and the disease will kill more than 600,000 patients — meaning 1,666 people per day in this country will die of cancer.

January 15, 2019

Overdose deaths soar among women 30+

by Patrick A. Malone

A new kind of gender equality can only be seen as tragic and sad: Drug overdoses are soaring among women older than 30, with a giant spike in these deaths due to opioids.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that since 1999, drug overdose death rates “increased by approximately 200 percent among women aged 35–39 and 45–49 years, 350 percent among those aged 30–34 and 50–54 years, and nearly 500 percent among those aged 55–64 years.” Overall for women aged 30-64, the CDC says, the rate of opioid overdose fatalities increased by a whopping 492 percent from 1999 to 2017.

The new data show the malignancy of the opioid crisis, which claimed more than 70,000 American lives in just the last year — more men than women. The overdose death rate itself rose in one year alone by 10 percent, and federal authorities say such incidents, intentional or accidental and too often now involving the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, have become a leading killer of Americans 50 and younger.

January 13, 2019

Cracking down on medical hype could cut $30 billion in wasted costs

by Patrick A. Malone

When reformers look for ways to slash the ever-higher costs of American medical care, one line item should leap from television screens, print pages, and radio broadcasts: How does the nation benefit from medical enterprises spending $30 billion annually in a growing avalanche of marketing and advertising — and why can’t this be stopped or subjected to tougher regulation?

Two physician-scientists at The Center for Medicine in the Media at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice have published on the JAMA Network their new research, showing that:

[M]edical marketing expanded substantially [between 1997 and 2016], and spending increased from $17.7 to $29.9 billion, with direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs and health services accounting for the most rapid growth, and pharmaceutical marketing to health professionals accounting for most promotional spending.

January 11, 2019

Add these to your 2019 health resolutions: Hearing, diet, and clutter

by Patrick A. Malone

We’re still early enough in 2019 that if you felt you didn’t resolve in enough excellent ways to improve your health and well-being, there are a few more solid strategies to check out.

You could, for example:

Get your hearing checked and ensure you’re protecting and enhancing it in every appropriate way.

January 9, 2019

Hospitals post price lists, but patients still cannot decipher what care really costs

by Patrick A. Malone

Ever noticed how tourists strolling our cities’ streets not only pause and peer into the windows of restaurants but they also invariably make a beeline for the menu posted out front? That’s smart consumerism, right, and so common sense that, hey, why doesn’t such price-checking work in medical care, too?

Well, think again: The nation’s in the midst of yet another experiment to try to make clearer and more transparent the soaring prices of medicine. With the dawn of 2019, Uncle Sam decided that hospitals needed to make available online their “chargemasters,” the giant list of their supposed prices for facilities, services, and prescription drugs.

Good luck, though, to consumers to find this important document, as required now by law, on hospital websites. Good luck, too, for patients in determining just what the sizable Excel spreadsheets mean for their finances and budgets.

January 6, 2019

A clarion call for real safeguards for patients harmed by medical devices

by Patrick A. Malone

Medical devices race onto the market with little or no effective testing or regulatory safeguards, and a proposed “reform” of the oversight system of products that are implanted in tens of millions of Americans is a sham, safety advocates say.

That’s because there are gaping flaws in the proposal to alter the so-called 510(k) procedure under which the federal Food and Drug Administration clears medical devices for sale, say medical journalist Jeanne Lenzer (right) and health care activist Shannon Brownlee (left).

Their Op-Ed in the Washington Post is the latest salvo against FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb’s claims of “transformative” changes in medical device regulation by his agency. News organizations around the world in recent weeks have published investigations of how poorly such products are tested, reviewed, and then released on markets, killing and injuring patients as a result.

January 4, 2019

Who didn’t see this coming? Patient anger grows over knee surgery hype

by Patrick A. Malone

With a graying nation projected to see millions of patients undergoing knee replacements each year at an annual cost to taxpayers running in the billions of dollars, it may be past time to ask if surgeons and hospitals promote and perform these popular procedures to excess.

Liz Szabo, in a story written for the nonprofit, nonpartisan Kaiser Health News Service (KHN) and published in the Washington Post, reported that knee surgeries have their “risks and limitations,” and “doctors are increasingly concerned that the procedure is overused and that its benefits have been oversold.”

As she wrote:

December 26, 2018

With more disclosures like these, why would patients want robot surgery?

by Patrick A. Malone

When surgeons insist on cutting on patients using the million-dollar da Vinci robot system, patients should demand to know why — and to be skeptical to the nth degree whether the device-based operation will be beneficial to them, or if it is yet another way for doctors and hospitals to make medical care exorbitantly expensive and to boost their profits.

NBC News, as part of a global investigation of medical devices and their harms, deserves credit for adding yet more disturbing disclosures with a detailed story about the da Vinci. The report clearly seeks to be balanced and doesn’t deliver as hard-hitting a point of view as The Bleeding Edge, a recent and important HBO documentary on the surgical robot system.

Still, there are plenty of disturbing items that ought to stop lawmakers, regulators, safety advocates, and patients, and force a hard re-thinking about da Vinci:

December 18, 2018

30-year Swedish study boosts two approaches to prostate cancer care

by Patrick A. Malone

A large, long-running study on treating prostate cancer, a leading killer of men, has supported both “watchful waiting” with most men diagnosed with the disease, and aggressive therapies — especially surgery — for patients at higher risk of the disease’s spread.

Parsing the results of this research, however, may send men to a key source of information: Their own doctors, with whom they should consult closely.

That’s because the study’s duration and the information it produced requires nuanced interpretation, depending on patients and their specifics. Just consider how news organizations differed in the headlines for their stories on the research:

December 14, 2018

Simple toys are best for kids, pediatricians say

by Patrick A. Malone

Moms, dads, grandparents and many others will fork over a lot of money for pricey toys this holiday season. But the doctors who care for children have timely shopping advice: Don’t throw away hard-earned dollars on fancy electronics. Instead, look for simple, tried-and-true toys.

Items like dolls, cars, blocks, crayons, and easy games may be more beneficial to youngsters than blinking, whirring, flashing, e-gizmos, says the American Academy of Pediatrics, a group representing more than 60,000 doctors who care for kids.

The group said in a detailed policy guidance that youngsters need to learn to be social and to stretch their imaginations. Toys that are basic, sturdy, and safe help them do this more so than expensive, complex products.