Be courageous: help stop the pill madness

Medicine people give it a sterile-sounding name. Polypharmacy means giving too many drugs, usually to an elderly person. But this practice is worthy of clearer words: dumb, dreadful or doctoring at its worst. The idea to mention the growing problem of giving too many pills in combination came to me after reading this Medscape coverage of a trial of statin removal in patients nearing end of life. The randomized clinical trial was presented at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. One group of patients had their statin stopped and the other group continued the drug as is the normal practice. The researchers found no difference in mortality but they did note patients in the discontinuation arm reported an improved quality of life and a trend toward fewer symptoms. A cost analysis showed major savings, and if this practice took hold over large populations, savings to the health care system would be immense. That we need a study to tell us it’s okay to stop non-evidence-based pills is telling. I’m not sure where commonsense got lost. These chemicals, such as statins, ACE-inhibitors, beta-blockers, were shown to be beneficial in the setting of clinical trials of patients who were not elderly, frail, encumbered by cancer, demented and close to death. Take the statin trial from the cancer meeting. Of course there was no difference in mortality from stopping the drug. Depending on the risk of the patient (high-risk–more benefit, l...
Source: Dr John M - Category: Cardiology Authors: Source Type: blogs