Adverse drug reactions and hospital admissions reactions

[Guest guest]

Matt, thanks for even-mindedly adding your thoughts to this situation. One

person told me a story of her husband's hernia operation. When he opted for

surgery, they also implanted a sort of mesh to strengthen the abdominal wall,

its done often now I hear. So a few weeks later, the abdomen ruptured along the

incision, and it was redone. A couple weeks later he was getting agitated,

feeling poor, couldn't have a bowel movement, and eventually went to the ER as

symptoms were getting so distressing. Next day it was found that as a result of

an improper cut, adhesions were strangling the large intestine, and the symptoms

were a result of the toxicity. So ok, remove the scar tissue and free the

intestines, right? While he was recovering from surgery, air had entered his

IV line at his carotid artery and went straight to both left and right sides of

the brain and he had a stroke. No one noticed the monitor alerts! His wife

only heard of this when she called the hospital to tell

them she was going to be at her home phone if they needed to contact her. When

what was found to be air in the brain, he hasd to be air-lifted by helicopter

150 miles away to one of the few hyperbaric chambers in the country.

A few days and many high atmosphere treatments later, he was sent back to a

local hospital for stroke rehabilitation protocol. His left side was

paralyzed and much of the right too. Muscle wasting is increasing, and the

kicker is that in six weeks, if he isn't showing adequate improvement, he'll be

discharged as not responding to therapy, so they can fill the bed with a more

managable payer.

Now all this is bad enough, but his wife is a very detailed note taker, of who

what when and where, for this whole episode, including remarks and options noted

by the teams of medical people. They are finding the most obscure explanations

for the stroke, even tho one main physician admited the IV leak was most likely,

and wanted to discipline the nurse, (beat the dog, shit rolls down hill). No

layers want to take the case because of its complications lead them to believe

the settlement would be too small or lomg in coming, plus the hospital is

seeming to not release the records until the statute of limitations runs out.

But even if they get the records before that date, the case must be decided to

have merit by an MD!, or it is dropped. The statute and physician evaluator are

a result of compromise by the state to try to keep doctors and their money from

leaving for 'greener' pasture. I mentioned to her, that this is still early

in the stroke, so acupuncture may be very

helpful now, and it would not be contra-indicated for any meds he's on, but I

have a feeling this group would do what they can to retain control of the case,

even advising against something like that (too simple and elegant and profound

and natural). So while I seem to rant about how the orthodox medical and

pharmacuetical and hospital community doesn't care about anything but money and

prestige, it isn't undeserved.

 

Matt Bauer <acu.guy wrote:

I wanted to chime in and explain why I think information about WM/drug deaths

and adverse reactions are appropriate for this list. We are healthcare providers

and the more we know about the potential risk of the drugs and other WM

therapies our patients avail themselves to, the better we can manage their care.

All medical interventions should be considered for their benefit to risk ratio.

While I agree with Jason that we should not slam Western medicine in a knee jerk

manner, I disagree that we already know a lot about the risks of drugs and the

like. In fact, I believe we only know the tip of the iceberg about the true risk

of drugs and thus have an overly rosy view of their benefit to risk ratio.

 

 

 

Consider the Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) study that was recently

conducted. That study was supposed to run 7 years but was stopped after 5 years

when cases of breast cancer began to pop up at the end of the fourth year. Had

that study run four years, we would still not have any " scientific evidence "

about HRT causing breast cancer. And who knows, if that study would have run the

full 7 years or 10 or 20 years, we might have learned the HRT causes many other

health problems. Most drugs never go through such extensive testing as that HRT

study - in fact, the only reason the HRT study was that extensive, was they were

hoping to show HRT would reduce heart disease so the drug manufacture footed

most to the bill.

 

If more than 100,000 Americans die each year when everything goes right with

their drug use, common sense should tell us that their must be at least 1,000

more who are somehow damaged by drug medication use. That means over 100 million

adverse reactions and probably many more than that. That means that many of the

people we see in our practices are actually presenting with conditions that are

at least partly caused by the medication they are taking. That means that drug

use is a major pathogenic factor among our patients.

 

I also disagree that patients are well informed about the potential dangers of

drug use. I have probably told 100 or so of my patients over the years about the

Pomeranz study showing more than 100,000 deaths from properly taken drugs and

not one had ever heard of that study. But all of my patients have heard that

herbs may be dangerous. I also agree that we need to do more to further our

understanding about the risk of the herbs we prescribe - how about a formal

herbal adverse event reporting system? As much as I would support such a

system, I still believe drugs are much more dangerous than we know and that the

more we and the public understand this, the more pressure will be placed on

looking for relatively safer alternatives such as CM.

 

Matt Bauer

 

-

Chinese Medicine

Thursday, August 05, 2004 7:33 AM

Re: Adverse drug reactions and hospital admissions in the UK

 

 

One last comment (wooo.. I'm late..)

 

Another selling point for WM. Even though there are side-effects and

possibility of complications. WM has much data on what these are,

percentages of people that i.e. get nausea from drug X etc. WM has

put in some serious time, and the public sees this, and likes the

clarity - as wrong as it may be. They can look on the web and read

about their drug, disease, research etc. Many do. In alternative

medicine there is nothing. One trusts the practitioner. And when

something goes wrong (side-effects) which often happens, the

practitioner may say something like, ohh this is good, it is a healing

crisis. As true as this statement may be, the public (At least in

boulder) is on to this one, and just doesn't buy it. They want to

know what's up.

Comments?

 

-Jason

[Guest guest]

Hi Mystir!

 

Which state?

 

At 07:49 PM 8/5/04, you wrote:<snip>compromise by the state to try to keep

doctors and their money from leaving for 'greener' pasture

>

 

Regards,

 

Pete