Sterke kritiek hedendaagse geneeskunde
Terwijl in Nederland de discussie oplaait over alternatieve geneeskunde, en men spreekt van misleiding van patienten, publiceerden Amerikaanse onderzoekers een paper welke op het internet te vinden is en waarin een aantal feiten staan, die uitnodigen tot een nadere studie ervan! Het is namelijk behoorlijk schokkend, de titel van die paper is dan ook Death By Medicine.
En misschien is dit overdreven, statistieken zijn altijd lastig. Een ander rapport kwam tot de conclusie dat medisch handelen doodsoorzaak nummer 5 was...(zie onder) Maar daar ging alleen over medische fouten...en niet over bijwerkingen van geneesmiddelen!
Hier een aantal passages, alle literatuur referenties in de paper:
Uit de samenvatting:
This fully referenced report shows the number of people having in-hospital, adverse reactions to prescribed drugs to be
2.2 million per year. The number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections is 20 million per year.
The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million per year. The number of
people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million per year.
The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an
astounding 783,936 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and
injury in the US. (By contrast, the number of deaths attributable to heart disease in 2001 was 699,697, while the number
of deaths attributable to cancer was 553,251.5)
Het begin van de studie van de problemen van de hedendaagse geneeskunde
Dr. Lucian L. Leape opened medicine’s Pandora’s box in his 1994 paper, “Error in Medicine,” which appeared in the
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).(16) He found that Schimmel reported in 1964 that 20% of hospital
patients suffered iatrogenic injury, with a 20% fatality rate. In 1981 Steel reported that 36% of hospitalized patients
experienced iatrogenesis with a 25% fatality rate, and adverse drug reactions were involved in 50% of the injuries. In
1991, Bedell reported that 64% of acute heart attacks in one hospital were preventable and were mostly due to adverse
drug reactions.
Leape focused on the “Harvard Medical Practice Study” published in 1991, (16a) which found a 4% iatrogenic injury rate
for patients, with a 14% fatality rate, in 1984 in New York State. From the 98,609 patients injured and the 14% fatality
rate, he estimated that in the entire U.S. 180,000 people die each year partly as a result of iatrogenic injury.
Leape hoped his paper would encourage medical practitioners “to fundamentally change the way they think about errors
and why they occur.” It has been almost a decade since this groundbreaking work, but the mistakes continue to soar.
In 1995, a JAMA report noted, "Over a million patients are injured in US hospitals each year, and approximately
280,000 die annually as a result of these injuries. Therefore, the iatrogenic death rate dwarfs the annual automobile
accident mortality rate of 45,000 and accounts for more deaths than all other accidents combined."(23)
At a 1997 press conference, Leape released a nationwide poll on patient iatrogenesis conducted by the National Patient
Safety Foundation (NPSF), which is sponsored by the American Medical Association (AMA). Leape is a founding member
of NPSF. The survey found that more than 100 million Americans have been affected directly or indirectly by a medical
mistake. Forty-two percent were affected di
rectly and 84% personally knew of someone who had experienced a medical
mistake.(14)
At this press conference, Leape updated his 1994 statistics, noting that as of 1997, medical errors in inpatient hospital
settings nationwide could be as high as 3 million and could cost as much as $200 billion . Leape used a 14% fatality
rate to determine a medical error death rate of 180,000 in 1994.(16) In 1997, using Leape’s base number of 3 million
errors, the annual death rate could be as high as 420,000 for hospital inpatients alone.
Recent Adverse Drug Reactions
More-recent studies on adverse drug reactions show that the figures from 1994 published in Lazarou’s 1998 JAMA
article may be increasing. A 2003 study followed 400 patients after discharge from a tertiary care hospital setting
(requiring highly specialized skills, technology, or support services). Seventy-six patients (19%) had adverse events.
Adverse drug events were the most common, at 66% of all events. The next most common event was procedure-related
injuries, at 17%.(40)
In a New England Journal of Medicine study, an alarming one in four patients suffered observable side effects from the
more than 3.34 billion prescription drugs filled in 2002.(41) One of the doctors who produced the study was interviewed
by Reuters and commented, "With these 10-minute appointments, it’s hard for the doctor to get into whether the
symptoms are bothering the patients."(42) William Tierney, who editorialized on the New England Journal study, said “…
given the increasing number of powerful drugs available to care for the aging population, the problem will only get
worse.” The drugs with the worst record of side effects were selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors ( SSRIs),
nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and calcium-channel blockers. Reuters also reported that prior research
has suggested that nearly 5% of hospital admissions (over 1 million per year) are the result of drug side effects. But
most of the cases are not documented as such. The study found that one of the reasons for this failure is that in nearly
two-thirds of the cases, doctors could not diagnose drug side effects or the side effects persisted because the doctor
failed to heed the warning signs.
Ander rapport: doodsoorzaak 5
Millennium Research Group, an authority on medical technology market intelligence, has conducted a detailed and thorough analysis of the acute care clinical information systems market, and it found that a major driver in the United States is the demand for improvement in patient safety. Medical errors are the fifth-leading cause of deaths in the United States, with up to 98,000 deaths annually.