Posted by Gary Schwitzer in Health care journalism, Quality of care
Another excellent piece by John Fauber of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, “Drug that could stop stroke isn’t always used.” This story also includes good graphics and reminders for readers on warning signs of a stroke, how to be prepared for a stroke emergency and what to do in such an emergency.
And, in that newspaper’s partnership with MedPageToday.com, a version of the story appears on that site as well under the headline, “Do Certified Stroke Centers Deliver Speedy Treatment?“
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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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c3 posted on July 28, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Given the modest benefit (based on what I’ve read) this may not be a terrible tragedy. This probably happens because:
1) the window for treatment is 3 hours from onset of symptoms. I assume a lot of stroke patients delay coming in
2)With the single biggest complication of tPA being intracranial hemorrhage. I suspect there’s a persistent reluctance (even when all the dots are aligned) to give a therapy that may WORSEN the symptoms.