Posted by Gary Schwitzer in Health care journalism, Medical devices
I feel a promotional campaign underway for the trials of an implantable device to control high blood pressure that is resistant to drug therapy.
NBC did a breathless story on the device a few weeks ago.
And now the Des Moines Register published one that is strikingly similar to the NBC piece.
* No data on harms or benefits
* The closest thing to evidence was a single positive anecdote of patient success
* No independent perspective, only an interview with a single conflicted source
* No estimate of costs of this approach which could be considerable.
Treatment for advanced ovarian tumors may lengthen survival, but questions still remain, despite the story’s emphasis on “promising” and “new hope.”
As with the HealthDay story on this research that we reviewed, readers of this story get a good dose of caveats and cautions along with the suggestions that electrical brain stimulation might someday “have implications” for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
The readers of this story and the other one we reviewed by Reuters are likely to understand that electrical brain stimulation could have some memory effects, but it’s a long way from becoming a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
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