Word: patients
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Another, subtler problem can be the difference between what are known as surrogate outcomes and patient outcomes. A new drug or treatment may reliably lower cholesterol, say, or reduce the size of a tumor - these are surrogate outcomes - and the drug-maker would call that a success. But the ultimate goal of treatment isn't simply to give you lab results you can boast about, it's to make you feel better and live longer; those are the patient outcomes. Sometimes though, good surrogate outcomes don't lead to good patient outcomes. Hormone replacement therapy, for example, raises good cholesterol...
...trials, the studies may be designed to yield the sunniest results possible. Allowing a new drug to shadow-box against a placebo, for instance, promises more marketable results than pitting it against a competing drug that's already on the market. Publicizing only surrogate outcomes without mentioning whether the patient benefits in any substantive way is another common drug company dodge. So is burying - or at least minimizing - side effects or other shortcomings...
Prescription pads, clipboards and patient charts are so 20th century. In the era of CT scans, gene-splicing and stem-cell breakthroughs, handwritten record-keeping feels about as outmoded as the fluoroscope. It's more than just strangely retro; it's fantastically expensive...
...researchers found that every sample from a patient with ARVC had less plakoglobin and that in other types of heart disease plakoglobin was normal...
...Andriole recommends a screening approach tailored to the particular patient. "If the man sitting in front of me was an elderly man with a medical condition and he looked like he had a limited life expectancy - say seven to 10 years," Andriole says, "I think I could have a good conscience in telling him that the PSA test is not necessarily...