|
|
|
|
| The above headline came from April 3rd, 2000 ABCnews.com site. This article points out a large problem caused by the rate at which Americans use prescribed drugs. In the article it states that last year alone an estimated one and a half million Americans were admitted to hospitals suffering from adverse side effects of medications. Dr. Brian Strom of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine commented “We have an epidemic of death due to problematic prescribing in the United States." One of the problems cited in the article is that newer drugs with little track record are replacing older ones. The comments made in the article call for reflection as they suggest human experimentation on a large scale. "Some doctors are prescribing new drugs rather than older more established ones. Only when a drug is on the market for several years, and used by hundreds of thousands of people, however, are its risks well understood." Does this mean that drugs are prescribed on a large scale before enough data is obtained to fully understand the harmful effects? Several MDs interviewed claim the drug sales people are partially to blame promoting drugs immediately upon release before the doctor has a chance to understand them. “There are sales representatives in your office the day the drug is released on the market encouraging you to use it and saying no one uses that old stuff anymore,” says Dr. Jerry Avorn of the Harvard Medical School. In spite of these numbers Reuters Health news service reported on April 20, 2000 that Medical doctors wrote 9% more prescriptions in 1999 than in 1998. That translated out to each medical physician writing an average of 2060 prescriptions in 1999 alone. As high as this number seems it only accounted for 53.5% of prescriptions written. According to the report, the bulk of the remainder of prescriptions were written by nurse practitioners and physicians assistants. |
|
|
| Nurse operates, doctor accused From Barcelona Spain comes an interesting little story about a nurse who was allowed by a leading ophthalmologist in the city to perform surgeries. The accusations stem mainly from account of the male nurse performing cataract removal surgeries on patients. This story was reported in the British Medical Journal. The author went on to report that this case was similar to one in Britain where a nursing sister was disciplined for taking out a patient’s appendix. "Wait doctor I’m still alive, don’t kill me!" More than 10,000 people of the Netherlands are saying this by carrying what they call "Declaration of Life" cards or anti-euthanasia "passports". It seems the public is becoming scared of over enthusiastic doctors who are increasingly practicing "non-voluntary" euthanasia thus ending seriously ill patient’s lives without their approval. This fear is based on good reason, according to the most recent survey of Dutch physicians conducted by their government, 23 percent of the doctors said they had ended a patient’s life without his or her explicit request. More than 60% of orthodox medical treatment not scientific In a June 6, 1998 article printed in the British Medical Journal Dr. Iain Chalmers admitted this interesting item as part of an article where he was criticizing what he considered a "double standard" in reviewing procedures of orthodox medicine to what the article called "alternative medicine". Dr. Chalmers was writing about a subject that we chiropractors have known about for some time. Occasionally an article appears that tries to criticize chiropractic by falsely saying it is not scientific. In reality chiropractic has as much, or in some instances more science behind the things we say than does the medical approach to health care treatment by drugs or surgery. Tragic story of child killed at birth raises questions (Reader beware, the following story is both tragic and disturbing.) In the Thursday October 10, 1998 issue of the Jerusalem Post appeared a story with the following headline: Police probe baby’s decapitation at birth. This chilling story is about a child who was decapitated during birth while the doctors were using the help of a suction devise now more widely used in the birth process. The death occurred when the child’s wide shoulders became stuck and the delivery team pulled hard on the infant’s head and caused the head to separate from the body. The Hospital director, Dr. Oscar Embon said the staff was "very experienced". He went on to comment, "The delivery was going as it should and the team saw no reason to perform a Caesarean section before the tragedy occurred." This chilling story is an extreme example of a situation chiropractors have been warning about for a long time called Traumatic Birth Syndrome, (TBS). Many chiropractors advise parents that children should be checked at birth for vertebral subluxations caused from a "normal birth" process. Chiropractors report that they regularly care for children with birth subluxations that would have had a large impact on the child’s health and quality of life. Although the tragedy as reported above is rare, according to many chiropractors, trauma from birth causing neurological problems from subluxations is not so rare at all. Many authorities now recommend children receive a chiropractic spinal check up as soon as possible after birth to lessen the effects from Traumatic Birth Syndrome and Subluxation. |
|
hospitalized americans per year |
| USA Today, November 11, 199 issue reported that medical mistakes kill anywhere between 44,000 and 98,000 hospitalized Americans each year. The report by the Institute of Medicine calls the errors stunning and demands major changes in the health care system to protect patients. They call for a 50% reduction in su8ch errors over a five year period as a target. The report goes on to say that the problem is not as much cases of recklessness by individual doctors as much as basic flaws in the way hospitals and clinics operate. One of the reported problems is in reading the handwriting of doctors on their prescriptions. This is also compounded by the fact that many drugs sound alike. The report states that health care is more than a decade behind improving safety compared with other high-risk industries. The financial impact of these mistakes is estimated to be approximately $8.8 billion dollars per year according to the report. William Richardson, president of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and chairman of the institute panel that compiled the report sums his remarks up with, “These stunning high rates of medical errors… are simply unacceptable in a medical system that promises first to do no harm.” |
|
|
| From Europe Today, April 1998 comes an interesting report about the level of error occurring in the diagnosis of measles. The feedback comes from the UK's Public Health Laboratory Service, which found that 97.5% of the time, British doctors are wrong in their diagnosis of measles. This conclusion was reached after saliva tests were performed on 12,000 person diagnosed with measles. Roger Buttery, an advisor on transmissible diseases at the Cambridge and Huntingdon Health Department, said "a majority of doctors say they can recognize measles 'a mile off' but we now know that this illness occurs in only 2.5% of the cases." If the information offered by Buttery et al. is correct, then the true incidence of measles in the UK is not the reported 6,000 per year, but more like 150. |
|
|
| An interesting bit of information comes from a story reported by Reuters News dated March 10, 2000. In that article they reported, "Recent studies showing that three times as many people died last year as a result of physician mistakes than by gunshot. This information has Americans split over whether there is a greater need for laws disciplining negligent doctors or careless gun owners. In the February Zogby American Values survey of 1,028 respondents nationwide, 43.1% of those surveyed thought that it was more important to pass legislation holding doctors accountable for their mistakes than the owners of guns used in a crime. |
| Top / Back |
     |
| Download AOL Instant Messenger |