Effectiveness of medical treatments. Surprise?

No, it is not a surprise – it is natural result of the modern paradigm in health care and drug industry.

 

Clinical Evidence, a project of the British Medical Journal, recently combed through the 3,000 medical treatments that have been studied in controlled, randomized studies. They found, for half of those, we have no idea how well they work

Keep in mind that the numbers above do not represent how often a given medical treatment is used. Instead, they represent the number of medical treatments in each category.

 

“We want to identify treatments that work and for which the benefits outweigh the harms, especially treatments that may be underused,” the authors note. “We also wish to highlight treatments that do not work or for which harms outweigh benefits.”

 

Those that fall into the “unknown effectiveness” category are medical treatments that “for which there are currently insufficient data or data of inadequate quality.”

 

When health policy wonks talk about ending unnecessary care, they usually mean targeting these types of treatments — the ones where we have no idea whether they’re making us any healthier. but still increase spending.