Originally published August 4 2005
Doctors often fail to offer simple, potentially life-saving treatments
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Papers in the New England Journal of Medicine report 11 percent of heart attack patients, 19 percent of congestive heart failure patients and 29 percent of pneumonia patients who go to the hospital do not receive simple, universally agreed-upon treatments such as the administration of aspirin to someone who has suffered a heart attack.
Years and even decades after doctors agreed on lifesaving standard therapies for heart attacks, pneumonia and congestive heart failure, disturbingly large numbers of patients aren't receiving them, according to two papers in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
� 19% of patients with congestive heart failure.
Treatment can be as simple as giving a heart attack patient an aspirin, something only 92% of hospitals do for all appropriate patients, says Ashish Jha of the Harvard School of Public Health and lead author of one of the papers.
But despite authoritative, universal agreement that those measures should happen quickly and be given to all patients, a surprising number didn't receive them.
RELATED SITES Patients can access data about specific hospitals at www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov and www.qualitycheck.org.
"Is this the best that we can do for three conditions where the evidence is so compelling?"
says Kenneth Kizer, president and CEO of the National Quality Forum, a non-profit developing national strategy for health care quality.
The group was not involved in the studies.
The Jha paper used newly available data from the Hospital Quality Alliance, an association of medical schools, hospitals and government agencies.
� ACE inhibitors to relieve heart muscle stress, 75%.
� Beta-blockers to slow the heart/lower blood pressure at admission, 85%, and discharge, 84%.
The research echoed data presented in the second paper by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, or JCAHO, the organization that accredits U.S. hospitals.
JCAHO found a range: 91% of heart attack victims got beta-blockers, which slow the heart and lower blood pressure; only 55% of heart failure patients received necessary discharge instructions.
You've got to do it all, and you've got to do it 100% of the time," says Jerod Loeb, executive vice president for research at JCAHO.
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