Month: December 2011

Physician Profiteering From Self-Referral

Unfortunately, another distasteful – and likely more common than the authors estimate – assessment of the unethical behavior of physicians.

This is from JAMA.  It’s a health-insurance carrier records review regarding differences in rate of ordering nuclear stress testing and stress echocardiography depending on the cardiologist financial conflict-of-interest.  Basically, they were asking the question – if the ordering cardiologist had a financial interest in the imaging performance and interpretation, would they order more tests?

Sadly, as you might imagine, the answer is yet.  If the physician billed technical and professional fees for the nuclear stress, the adjusted OR for ordering a nuclear stress was 2.3 compared to physicians who had no financial interests in the nuclear stress.  For stress echocardiography, the adjusted OR was 12.6.

I have no doubt the same sort of thing happens with neurologists who own their own MRI facilities, etc.  Money corrupts physicians just the same as any other human being.

“Association Between Physician Billing and Cardiac Stress Testing Patterns Following Coronary Revascularization”
jama.ama-assn.org/content/306/18/1993

C1-Esterase Inhibitor Might Improve Some Sepsis Outcomes

…or it might not.  This is a tiny study using a very expensive medication that probably works only on a few patients, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

As part of the inflammatory cascade, C1-esterase inhibitor (C1INH) modulates the coagulation cascade, impacts leukocyte activation, enhances bactericidal activity, and prevents endotoxin shock in sepsis models.  So, sounds like a good thing – let’s give it to patients and see what happens!

This was an open-label, randomized, controlled study in Moscow and St. Petersburg with 62 ICU patients – 20 controls and 42 treatment patients – that met inclusion criteria.  There were, unfortunately, a lot of differences between the control group and the treatment group.  These differences included a lot more post-operative patients, much more pneumonia, and more on the ventilator, and probably favored the treatment group.  The mortality is way better for the treatment group – 12% dead versus 45% – but it’s simply impossible to attribute all the effects to C1INH with all the other confounding differences.

That being said, this study is consistent the effects from other small studies.  Therefore, we will likely hear more about C1INH after larger, manufacturer-sponsored trials also undoubtedly find a way to spin positive results.

“C1-esterase inhibitor infusion increases survival rates for patients with sepsis”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22080632