WDDTY e-News Broadcast - 19 August 2004

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WHAT DOCTORS DON#8217;T TELL YOU - E-NEWS BROADCAST

No. 96 - 19 August 2004

Please feel free to email this broadcast to any

friends you feel would appreciate receiving it.

 

 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS: E-News is packing its bucket and

spade for its annual holidays. We'll be back in a

mailbox near you on 10 September.

 

 

 

BACK TO PLAN B: Breakthrough cancer drug can kill

 

It's been just a few short months since Avastin

(bevacizumab) was being hailed as the great new

breakthrough drug for cancer therapy. It's the first

drug designed to inhibit angiogenesis, the process by

which new blood vessels develop and carry vital

nutrients to a tumour. In other words, the drug

starves the tumour.

 

The American drug agency, the Food and Drug

Administration (FDA), approved it in February as part

of the treatment for cancer of the colon or rectum.

 

But in just five months of use, doctors have

discovered the drug can cause stroke, heart attacks

and angina, and can also double the risk of a fatal

thrombosis.

 

Not that the drug was ever a day at the beach. When

it was approved the FDA knew the drug could cause

fatal stomach perforations, fatal hemorrhage,

hypertension and congestive heart failure.

 

These new concerns must make Avastin one of the

untouchables, but the new discoveries raise concerns

about the efficacy and reliability of the

pre-licensing clinical trials that too often miss

adverse reactions that could even kill the patient.

 

It's not for the first time, when faced with these

deadly therapies, that we've said we'd rather take our

chances with the cancer.

 

(Source: Food and Drug Administration website).

 

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PARKINSON'S: The forgotten drug

 

Researchers are getting excited about a drug that used

to be given to patients with early-stage Parkinson's,

but which was suddenly dropped.

 

The drug, selegiline, is in the family known as

monoamine oxidase type B inhibitors that had been used

since the 1980s to slow the progress of the disease.

 

The University of Birmingham has rediscovered

selegiline after reviewing its use and efficacy in 17

trials, which involved a total of 3,525 patients.

 

Most patients showed improvements in mobility and

general lifestyle activities compared with those on a

placebo.

 

Better yet, the drug is cheap and readily available.

 

So why did it suddenly fall from fashion? Oh, it was

something to do with a study in 1995 that found it

killed 57 per cent of those taking it.

 

 

 

MOBILE PHONE MASTS: Now our police are getting sick

 

We can't help feeling that we're building a major

health problem with our networks of mobile phone

masts, and we fear the problem will worsen as the G3

masts start appearing.

 

One example of this advanced technology is the Tetra

mobile network, which is being introduced to all 53 of

the UK's police forces. It is an advanced digital

network that should be fully operational by next

spring, at a cost of £2.9 billion to the UK

government.

 

As usual, the network has been introduced with all the

standard scientific platitudes that it is perfectly

safe. But early reports back 'from the field' suggest

otherwise.

 

Six people based at one police station in Norfolk have

all reported sick with a debilitating health condition

since a Tetra mast was installed just yards from them.

The police staff has suffered bouts of dizziness and

severe headaches, and it's been as bad for the 25

local residents who also happen to live near the mast.

Repeated nose bleeds, disturbed sleep and skin

problems, especially among the children, have been

reported.

 

The police staff has been warned not to make public

their health concerns. A similar ban was imposed on

one policeman, Neil Dring, who died from cancer of the

oesophagus, which developed after he had been using

his Tetra handset.

 

These incidents are not isolated examples. Some

reports suggest that hundreds of policemen and women

have complained of deterioration in their health since

Tetra was introduced in their area.

 

(Source: Daily Telegraph, 14 August 2004).

 

 

 

STATISTIC OF THE WEEK

 

Nearly one in four doctors in the UK is mentally ill.

A 12-year study has found that 22 per cent of doctors

who participated were suffering from a basic mental

disorder by the age of 30. Interestingly, researchers

from University College London, who carried out the

study, found that the doctors' neurotic tendencies

were linked to their personalities rather than from

work pressures. So people who are first mad then

become doctors. . .

 

(Source: The Times, 18 August 2004).

 

 

 

NURSE, THE SCREENS: Hospitals are killing too many

patients

 

A hospital is no place to be if you're sick, and new

studies just released confirm this view. A review of

practices in hospitals in the UK has found that

850,000 errors occur every year, resulting in 40,000

deaths, although the rate could be as high as 72,000

deaths a year.

 

This gloomy picture is just from those incidents that

hospitals and staff admit to, and the situation could

be many times worse. Overall, the figures suggest an

error rate of 2.2 per cent, whereas other studies have

reported rates from as high as 36 per cent. An

Australian study, thought to be one of the most

accurate and reliable yet produced, reported an error

rate of 4.75 per cent, which, if so, would suggest

that the situation in UK hospitals is twice as bad as

that reported.

 

The study doesn't reveal how the patients got into

hospital in the first place, but a What Doctors Don't

Tell You report estimated that up to 1.1 million

Britons are admitted every year following an adverse

reaction to a drug or medical therapy, or from a

prescribing error. So once medicine has got you into

a hospital bed, it has a pretty good chance of

finishing you off.

 

Not that the situation is any better in the USA.

Around 195,000 patients die in an American hospital

every year as the result of a medical error, one study

has concluded.

 

The health insurance group Healthgrades Inc produced

the new figures, which double those reported by the

Institute of Medicine in 1999. It was based on a

review of 45 per cent of hospital admissions from 2000

to 2002, and includes failures to rescue dying

patients and deaths from infection of low-risk

patients, neither of which were included in the

Institute of Medicine's report.

 

In addition to the deaths, 1.14 million patients also

suffered a 'safety incident', which represents one in

four Medicare patients admitted from 2000 to 2002.

 

(Sources: British Medical Journal, 2004; 329: 369.

Reuters, 27 July 2004).

 

 

 

 

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