Unlike drug ads that you find on television, cancer advertisements from hospitals aren’t subjected to the same data-based scrutiny.
And that could be a problem, since they arguably can have more influence on patients than pharmaceutical ads.
Cancer ads play on the emotions of patients, and frequently use words like “highest cure rates” and “lowest risk,” despite having little data to back up the claims.
Patients with cancer, along with their families, are understandable fearful after being diagnosed, so these ads hold powerful sway.
But are high-powered, academic cancer centers better than local hospitals? Not necessarily. Although rarer forms of cancer may be better treated in the city, there is little data suggesting that mortality rates for more common cancers are better at places that have bigger advertising budgets.
As Dartmouth’s evidence guru Gilbert Welch points out, “such ads could persuade people with localized cases of more common diseases like prostate cancer to travel long distances from their families at great expense to obtain treatment that may be as successful, or unsuccessful, as the treatment available much closer to home.”
Indeed.
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{ 3 comments }
Interesting, we should hope that these hospitals would come up with good advertisement so not to harm cancer patients emotions. Very informative post. Thanks
In my own care as a cancer patient, I have found that larger university teaching institutions often have more modern technology, scanners, and machinery. My doctors at larger university teaching hospitals also have played an active role in writing guidelines for my disease (nothing rare – just thyroid cancer). As such, their protocol for treating me is one that might take years to trickle down to the care of a doctor in a community hospital. Yes, there is a lot of glossy advertising and lobby waterfalls that come along with the university hospital cancer centers that have nothing to do with improving cancer mortality. However, there are a lot of benefits to these hospitals that while maybe not reducing mortality rates can lead to improved quality of care for patients.
I agree with almost everything in the article you cite except this:
“such ads could persuade people with localized cases of more common diseases like prostate cancer to travel long distances from their families at great expense to obtain treatment that may be as successful, or unsuccessful, as the treatment available much closer to home.”
This is just plain wrong. Prostate cancer patients at larger hospitals have been shown to do better than those treated by local doctors. For example: the standard of care for newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients today is robotically assisted radical prostatectomy. While I personally believe there is nothing to support this as a best practice, I do know that one’s chances of achieving a successful result (in terms of cancer control and side effects) are MUCH higher when the RP is performed by a “high-volume” surgeon, who is more likely to be found at a large, urban hospital. Recent studies have shown that being operated on by a local surgeon who has not completed the steep “learning curve” associated with the RALP is very risky.
On the other hand, travelling long distances for unproven techniques like proton beam radiation therapy aren’t worth it.
Leah F. Cohen
prostatecancerblog.net
A project of Malecare.org
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