Best study name ever

Thanks to my friend Pam Marcus for passing this along. I thought it was an appropriate way for me to celebrate my reentry into blogging.

Lacasse A, Rey E, Ferreira E, Morin C, Bérard A: Validity of a modified Pregnancy-Unique Quantification of Emesis and Nausea (PUQE) scoring index to assess severity of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2008 Jan;198(1):71.e1-7.

Thank you, CBO

California HealthLine today reports on a new Congressional Budget Office Report that finds that inefficient delivery of health care, and delivery of interventions of dubious value, will swamp the effect of the aging of the population in increasing health care costs over the foreseeable future.

"The nature of the long-term fiscal problem has been misdiagnosed," Orszag said, adding that the aging population "is not by any means the main factor" behind the projected rise in cost growth. He noted that many new medical treatments and tests are "of dubious value." He said that in their efforts to stem the growth of health care costs, Congress and federal policymakers need to promote cost effectiveness and "evidence-based" medicine (Reuters, 11/13).

Obviously Congress needs to take the lead in addressing this struggle. Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus pledged to address the problem aggressively; I hope he does, and I hope Budget Chief Orszag doesn't lose his job saying what needed to be said.

NY Times skewers "natural" claims of beauty products

Natural does not equal healthier, nor does it even equal, well, natural. An article in today's Times skewers the marketing ploys of a variety of beauty products available at stores like Whole Foods, and reiterates that there's no evidence that individual ingredients benefit health or beauty, or that claims of their natural or organic provenance are even necessarily true. Manufacturers profit handsomely on consumers' emotional beliefs that natural is somehow better.

"We’re seeing an increased consciousness that what you put on your body is as important as what goes in your body,” said Jeremiah McElwee, the senior coordinator in charge of personal care at Whole Foods, which is the company’s fastest-growing department. “The biggest impetus for buying natural or organic body care is the perceived health benefit.”

Emphasis on "perceived."

New website on reporting guidelines

The Equator website serves as a resource for consistent, accurate reporting in the literature of new research in a variety of health disciplines (e.g., systematic reviews, clinical trials, observational studies). Several of these disciplines have their own guidelines (e.g., the CONSORT guidelines for clinical trials), which are enforced by some of the leading journals. The site provides resources for authors, editors, and guideline developers.

reporting guidelines

Another online evidence-based medicine course

This one is from the University of North Carolina Health Sciences Library (my favorite library in the whole world, as it happens...) and the Duke University Medical Center Library.

(The photo is of UNC's Old Well, which is more photogenic than the library...)

New quality/safety blog

Robert Wachter, professor at UC San Francisco, author of Internal Bleeding, and patient-safety leader and innovator, has a new blog. This post nicely illustrates the health care quality learning curve as experienced by interns.

Be skeptical; be very skeptical

The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report has a piece today about an effort to survey Wellpoint's many (35 million) about their physicians in order to provide consumer-based rankings, also to include comments. All together now: "The plural of anecdote is not data." Indeed, as one consumer group interviewed by Kaiser said, these rankings are likely to be skewed to the negative by patients who have had bad experiences. There are better ways to collect consumer-centered data - for example, AHRQ's CAHPS measures - than mass rants of the type Wellpoint proposes.

I don't have much use for Zagat's restaurant reviews, either, for the same reason.