Surprise! We don’t know if half our medical treatments work

[kpete]

Clinical Evidence, a project of the British Medical Journal, recently combed through the 3,000 medical treatments that have been studied in controlled, randomized studies. They found, for half of those, we have no idea how well they work (h/t Austin Frakt):



http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/24/surprise-we-dont-know-if-half-our-medical-treatments-work/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein

[Fumesucker]

1. I got lectured by a doctor some years back about "evidence based medicine"

Looks like the odds are no better than a coin toss half the time.

[pediatricmedic]

5. Your right on the odds

Half the treatments we did when I started are no longer used due to research and "evidence based practice". A lot of them were "it seemed to work before, so let's try it again" type of treatments.

[Whisp]

2. bah. the effectiveness is well known. it's $$$ to many. n/t

[L0oniX]

3. I'll stay with my witch doctor ...who has the same or better results. n/t

[Fresh_Start]

4. your flawed assumption is that the treatment is supposed to cure or minimize the illness

and that we don't know.
But if you think of it from a profit center viewpoint, the answer is clear...these treatments make money sometimes incredible amounts of money.
Medicine is sadly a business more so than a calling.

[Scuba]

6. Well, since the average time between when a therapy is determined to be "best practice" and when ...

... half of all physicians have adopted that practice is something north of 13 years, this is not surprising.

What it really suggests though, is that the current "state of the art" is still "dark ages".