Assault and battery for money

NYT ' s Gina Kolatatells you what all of us health services researchers already know far too well. Surgical procedures don ' t have to be approved by the FDA or anybody else, and even when they are proven to be useless, surgeons keep doing them. She leads with the most notorious example, spinal fusion.In fact this goes way back. In the 1990s, what was then called the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research concluded that there was no evidence that spinal fusion was beneficial to patients. So, the spinal surgeons societypersuaded the Republican congress to eliminate the agency entirely. Quoth:AHCPR was also confronted in 1995 with an advocacy organization ’s active efforts to get it defunded. The source was an association of back surgeons who disagreed with conclusions reached by the [agency] on low-back pain and with practice guidelines based on that work. . . .The surgeons found sympathetic ears among House Republicans who, for reasons already discussed, were prepared to believe the worst about the agency. The events of 1995 followed many years of controversy over the merits of surgical procedures for low-back disorders. AHCPR entered this fray when its PORT on low-back pain reviewed the research and concluded that there was no evidence to support spinal fusion surgery and that such surgery commonly had complications.30 The North American Spine Societ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs