Marcus Pierson, MD: Evidence-based Medicine

Screening: Diabetes Mellitus, Adult Type II

Sun, 02 Mar 2003 18:20:34 GMT

Screening: Diabe http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/uspstf/uspsdiab.htm tes Mellitus, Adult Type II.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended yesterday that adults with high blood pressure or high cholesterol be screened for type 2 diabetes. It concluded that further research is needed on whether widespread screening of the general adult population would improve health outcomes. The task force also found insufficient evidence to recommend for or against routine screening for gestational diabetes in asymptomatic pregnant women.
[Family Medicine Notes]

Problem-Knowledge Couplers

Sat, 15 Feb 2003 21:44:18 GMT

This is something that a community could support and afford that may not be adopted by many small practices. If the usual adoption delay in health care, 10+ years applies, maybe it is on the horizon.

I have been watching and wanting this for about 7 years.

A comprehensive book on evidence-based pateint choice.

Thu, 27 Jun 2002 03:17:13 GMT

Evidence-based patient choice. Editors Adrian Edwards & Glyn Elwyn. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001. 330 pp. £19.95. ISBN 0-19-2631942

If you think this book will tell you how to implement evidence-based patient choice, then don't buy it. It won't do that, and, if you thought about it for a moment, you would recognise that it never could. There are too many variables before we even get to how we differ as individuals.

No, what this book does is to make you think about the issues that might be important to influence patient choice. Having a cast list that includes the usual suspects gives the book power, and the editors seem to have given them a thoughtful pill before they started writing.

Obviously risk is discussed at some length, and there is a mine of interesting references and perspectives that make one realise that there's more to this than meets the eye. And what about complex issues like the interaction of health economics and patient choice. It's covered, and well. But the most gripping chapter is Angela Coulter's vision of the future, which makes you realise just how much change there is to come. Before the last chapter, evidence-based patient choice could still be an option. After it, there's simply no argument.

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Amazon.com link

Editorial Reviews
Book Info
Provides a summary of current perspectives, and outlines a model of health care in which the evidence-based approach is integrated with the promotion of consumer choice. Examines the traditional approach, and the changing experience and expectations of consumers. Includes clinical examples and patient narratives. For clinicians and residents. Softcover.

Effective medicine means evidence exists.

Wed, 26 Jun 2002 03:30:20 GMT

Finding ways to increase the use of effective intervention is key to improved care. Just as letting patients make their choice when the evidence does not exist to scientifically support one course of action over another.