Mortality During Medical Meetings

Mortality During Medical Meetings

Robert Gorter wants you to put attention to the interesting study by The Department of Public Health of the University of Harvard in USA (which is with the University of California San Francisco Medical School (UCSF) one of the two leading medical schools in the USA).

Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD, from Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, found that high-risk patients with heart failure and cardiac arrest who were hospitalized in teaching hospitals had lower 30-day mortality when admitted during dates of national cardiology meetings. High-risk patients with AMI admitted to teaching hospitals during meetings were less likely to receive PCI, without any mortality effect. This means that more interventions during regular days caused more death than when the staff cardiologists were away and not on duty!!! The conclusions have terrible consequences: when cardiologists do major interventions during acute heart attacks and arrests, the likelihood to survive decreases compared to when less (routine) interventions take place…..

This is what Dr. Jena and her group concludes:

“We observed significant lower 30-day mortality among patients with high risk heart failure or cardiac arrest admitted to major teaching hospitals during the dates of 2 national cardiology meetings, as well as substantially lower PCI rates among high-risk patients with a myocard infarction, without any detriment to survival. The explanation for these findings is that the intensity of care provided during meeting dates is lower and that for high-risk patients with cardiovascular disease, the harms of this care may unexpectedly outweigh the benefits.”

JAMA Intern Med. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.6781

Published online December 22, 2014.

Robert Gorter and Erik Peper: “less is more…”

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