When more medicine isn’t always better: High costs of unnecessary radiation for terminal cancer patients - ScienceDaily

For cancer patients dealing with the pain of tumors that have spread to their bones, doctors typically recommend radiation as a palliative therapy. But as in many areas of medicine, more of this treatment isn't actually better. Medical evidence over the past decade has demonstrated that patients with terminal cancer who receive a single session of radiotherapy get just as much pain relief as those who receive multiple treatments. But despite its obvious advantages for patient comfort and convenience -- and the associated cost savings -- this so-called single-fraction treatment has yet to be adopted in routine practice. That's the finding of a new study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania published in JAMA. "Increased use of single fraction treatment would achieve the Holy Grail of health reform, which is real improvements in patient care at substantial cost savings," said the new study's lead author, Justin E. Bekelman, MD, an assistant professor of Radiation Oncology in Penn Medicine's Abramson Cancer Center. Yet so far, he notes, "despite the evidence, single fraction treatment is used rarely and it's reserved for patients with the poorest prognosis." Bekelman and his colleagues examined at a group of 3,050 patients 65 years and older treated with radiotherapy for advanced prostate cancer and bone metastases. In the analysis of patients drawn from the national Surveillance, Epidemiol...
Source: Psychology of Pain - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs