I do therefore I am or the bias of intervention in medicine

Cristina Roure

This week, thanks to a post of Sergio Minué in the blog "El Gerente de Mediado", I discovered the recent publication of "Ending Medical Reversal" The book refers to situations in which new studies more robust than the pre-existing ones contradict the standards of commonly accepted practices, which have now proved ineffective or even harmful.

Some will recall such vivid examples as the use of protein C activated in sepsis, high dose chemotherapy combined with autotransplant of stem cell in metastatic breast cancer, the aprotinin in cardiac surgery, or hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women. All of them were used for years until proven harmful.

I have not been able to read the book yet, but I read a report by the same author; Dr. Vinay Prasad in Mayo Clinical Proceedings exposes his vast research. Over ten years, 363 studies evaluating established practices were published, out of which 146 (40%), between 12 and 19 per year, were revoked (1). The author explains in the following video that such revocations usually occur after the precipitous adoption of new therapies based on incomplete or inadequate studies.

Chronic Complex Patients and the Blue Ocean Strategy

The book "Blue Ocean Strategy" by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne has been celebrating 10 years, having sold more than three and a half million copies, and now, to celebrate, a revised edition has just been published. The central thesis of the book is that today's markets are characterized by oversupply and therefore, companies must compete fiercely between them and the oceans (It’s a metaphor) are stained red with the blood of the fight. For this reason, the authors propose to companies to go on the search for blue oceans, like Cirque du Soleil or Ikea, where their products or services will be incontestable because people will see them as novel and useful. The strategy of these companies is clear: their contribution must be perceived as a value innovation, and as a consequence would able to open new unexplored markets like oceans that will not go red.

Leaving aside the commercial aspects of the theory, the book left me with the (attractive) vision of a blue ocean that, inevitably, I have contrasted with the difficulties that all health systems have when it comes to implementing convincing programs of patients’ care and I thought that perhaps at this point a blue ocean strategy would be beneficial when aiming to implement new projects that would arise from overcoming current difficulties. I have to admit that applying Chan and Mauborgne's theories to complex chronic patients is a bit far fetched, but I am convinced that there are some strategic methodology proposals that could be of some use.

The diagnostic process and medical errors

The past 15 years, since the publication of "To Err Is Human" report, has seen a great deal of progress in projects that promote patient safety, especially in programs such as increasing hand washing, identifying patients, surgical checklists or changes in nursing care, but on the other hand the diagnostic process continues to be a matter almost exclusive to medical work although it’s known that this is a very sensitive area for the safety of patients. This new report from the National Academy of Medicine (formerly Institute of Medicine), "Improving Diagnosis in Healthcare," is a follow up document to the aforementioned one, specifically focused on diagnostic errors.

The report defines the diagnostic error as the failure to obtain a detailed, timely explanation of a health problem. Experts have also included in the definition the physician’s inability to know how to explain the diagnosis to the patient. According to the report, diagnostic errors would have an incidence on medical consultations of 5%, accounting for 10% of deaths, 6-7% of adverse reactions in hospitals, as well as the leading cause of litigation in the health area (the figures correspond to the US).

Life quantity or more quality?

Ventricular assisting devices, VAD, or LVAD if for the left ventricle (the most common) are implantable instruments that help pump blood in situations where ventricular ejection force is severely compromised. In some cases the implantation of an LVAD facilitates the waiting for a cardiac transplant, but in others it’s adopted as a definitive solution. The price of the device is around $150,000 while the cost per QALY (cost per year of life earned) is between $200,000 and $400,000. The cost-effectiveness studies still don’t line up much, but the range of documented amounts is nowadays far above the $30,000 of Spanish per capita income. Remember that the WHO introduced the criterion of considering if a treatment is cost-effective when it doesn’t exceed three times the per capita income of a country.