Big pharma shenanigans, again

NY Times piece on Sunday, see link below. Brings up several issues, including inappropriate incentives of fee-for-service system (leading to too many procedures, increased use of more expensive oncology meds), big pharma pushing remarkably expensive cancer drugs and some with very marginal benefit, and use of very expensive and largely unproved robotic surgery for cancer. See http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/a-plan-to-fix-cancer-care/ .
 
Coincidentally, there was a strong editorial today in the boston globe (see http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/03/25/state-cautions-hospitals-about-patient-complications-during-robot-assisted-surgery/xOAsxR80qH5mVENDdktjKL/story.html?camp=newsletter ) reporting that there is a Massachusetts health advisory about safety concerns with robotic surgery.  So, while hospitals had been flashing their new sexy, seductive, high-tech (and remarkably expensive) devices to lure patients to them, now the brigham hosp (and others) are modifying their websites to reflect the new health advisory.  There have been a slew of studies showing, for example, that robotic-assisted laparoscopic hysterectomies lead to increased operation times and no claer benefit (eg, 2012 article in Journal ObGyn), and several articles showing that robotic-assisted prostate cancer surgery (including one by Hu at brigham) has no advantages and twice the incidence of incontinence/impotence.
 
Many of these issues seem to be surfacing now, basically showing that our health care system and the way care is provided in the US is pretty influenced by big pharma and big tech companies and not being driven by some overall plan based on the health needs of the population.

Comments

Post a Comment

if you would like to receive the near-daily emails regularly, please email me at gmodest@uphams.org

Popular posts from this blog

HDL a negative risk factor? or cholesterol efflux??

Although the data on HDL being protective of atherosclerotic disease is pretty consistent, there are negative studies, and the data on medications which dramatically improve HDL levels (eg, the cholesteryl ester transfer protein --CETP --inhibitors, such as torcetrapib) are clinically disappointing. there have been several explanations for this. for example, some HDL particles are "pro-inflammatory" and elicit an atherosclerotic response (which may be related to apolipoprotein C-III). a new article in NEJM highlights another angle -- that the issue is not the HDL number, but HDL's functionality in the reverse transport of cholesterol, as measured by the cholesterol efflux capacity (see  lipids HDL efflux capacity vs amt NEJM 2014 in dropbox, or  DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1409065). This article looks at the Dallas Heart Study, where they measured HDL levels, HDL particle concentrations, and cholesterol efflux capacity in 2924 adults free of cardiovascular disease and followed p
Read more

Drug company shenanigans: narcolepsy drug

I have not done a blog for a long time on drug company shenanigans. So it is my great pleasure to bring up a brand-new drug company approach to garner huge amounts of money (see  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/business/jazz-narcolepsy-avadel-patents.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare  ).  Based on an article by  Rebecca Robbins of the New York Times, who has written several articles on drug company excesses   As background, this will be my 42 nd  such blog: for the array, see  https://bucommunitymed.wpengine.com/page/4/?s=drug+company+shenanigans   Th e drug company  approach  this time  to extending  their  patents has a few “interesting” angles: -- this is a medication manufactured by Jazz Pharmaceuticals to treat narcolepsy: there are 2 versions: Xyrem and Xywav (Xywav has less sodium, so is marketed to those who should be on a low sodium diet). These meds are basically derivatives of gammahydroxybutyric acid (GHB)      -- the drug actually has a pretty
Read more

UPDATE: ASCVD risk factor critique

  I decided to do an extensive update of my prior ASCVD (atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease) risk analysis and critique of risk calculators, with much more information about the “non-traditional” risk factors. I felt that there should be more data/clarification, since I think we are really undertreating/not preventing the most common cause of death by relying on the ASCVD risk calculators   -- Cardiovascular risk models:      -- many of us rely on the various cardiovascular risk models to determine the appropriate approach to patients, and these are often integrated into the electronic medical records      -- these risk models have several very important limitations:          -- they are typically based on community data, eg from the Framingham study etc. But, in clinical practice, we are dealing with the individual and not the community:              -- there is very clear evidence that there are many individual risk factors that are associated with increased risk of a cardiovascu
Read more