Physicians take Dr. Siegel to task for his baseless, emotional support of CT scans for lung cancer screening. Apparently, he doesn’t believe in evidence-based medicine. Money quote: “the plural of anecdote is not data.“
If physicians don’t believe in the evidence, how can we convince the public?
Most importantly, he also neglects to take the downside risks of screening into account: False-positives are indeed common, and the diagnostic biopsies and needless major surgeries for benign or indolent nodules are not only costly but also emotionally devastating and (in about one in 20 cases) result in severe or even fatal complications. Merely asserting that “my patients want to know if they have cancer” is not a valid way to deal with this frustrating puzzle.
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- Is evidence-based medicine desirable?
- Nancy Snyderman: Is she aware of any evidence-based guidelines?
- Is evidence-based medicine appropriate for the elderly?
- Does evidence-based medicine raise costs?
- Evidence-based medicine is hard to implement
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I don’t understand how these responses weren’t more prominently displayed, whereas Siegel’s article was huge.
I’m gonna cancel my WSJ subscription – it amazes me that king of all capitalist publications so quickly rejects science (statistics, nonetheless!) and is so blindly emotional on this issue.
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