Case Studies
An NIH study of treatments for high blood pressure, called the ALLHAT trial, shows some of the strengths and limitations of comparative effectiveness research to improve patient care. More...
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WSJ
Oncologist believes CER can’t ‘keep pace with advances in medicine’—shouldn’t get between doctor and patient
Submitted by Tony Coelho on Thu, 04/08/2010 - 19:04 | Posted in:A recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Dr. Leonard Zwelling, illustrates why treatment decisions must stay between a patient and their doctor and reinforces the importance of the comparative effectiveness research (CER) language included in the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Zwelling, an oncologist, explains the challenges of using CER to set rigid national policy requirements. He highlights how cancer care is continually evolving in that it allows doctors to better address the individual needs of cancer patients whose bodies react to their forms of cancers in different ways than those of other patients:
Differing interpretations on procedure’s worth illustrate that no CER result should be final word
Submitted by admin on Wed, 03/10/2010 - 23:42 | Posted in:A recent Wall Street Journal article about the use of stent procedures in the medical community and the reaction to it by blogger Burt Cohen, offers another illustration of the complexities of comparative research, and again shows why results should be used to inform doctors and patients, but not to impose broad “one size fits all” prescriptions that do not reflect the complexities of the science or the differences in individual patients.
