Thursday, January 17, 2013
USPSTF pushes back on hepatitis C virus mass screening
I spend a lot of my time reading, thinking and writing about politics and medicine. I love the debate. Three of the five Kirsch progeny engaged in serious school debate programs, and I believe that they received years of training at our dinner table. I certainly learned a lot from them--and still do--and I hope they picked up a few worthy lessons along the way.
Some time ago, an associate admonished me to avoid dialogue concerning religion or politics, two of my staple conversation themes. This advice seemed misplaced as I've never had an argument in my life discussing a controversial issue. Indeed, I seek out these opportunities. I don't want the other individual to change the subject; I want this person to change my mind.
Controversy erupted recently when hepatitis C enthusiasts pushed back against the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) draft recommendation regarding testing folks for hepatitis C virus (HCV). More turbulence is sure to follow.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had previously issued their guideline advising that all individuals born during 1945-1965 be tested once for HCV. That would include the Whistleblower, who has no risk factors associated with HCV infection. I have not been tested and have no intention of doing so.
I've already posted a vigorous rant explaining why I feel that patients with HCV are over-treated. As I indicated there, the Food and Drug Administration has approved two new medicines, boceprevir (Victrelis) and telaprevir (Incivek) which have significantly increased treatment efficacy. HCV patients who opt for treatment are prescribed one of these two medicines along with two others to complete a three drug HCV cocktail. These are very serious medicines with potential serious toxicities.
I applaud this medical advance and hope that research in the near term will increase efficacy, reduce toxicity and simplify the treatment.
HCV experts and many physicians advocate treatment to eliminate the virus so that the hepatitis infection will not progress to cirrhosis and liver cancer. Liver failure from HCV infection is a major cause of liver transplantation.
Indeed, if you were a HCV patient and your doctor advised treatment "to prevent liver failure, cirrhosis or liver cancer," I suspect you would be inclined to accept the recommendation. I don't think, however, that many patients are given the fair and balanced context when they are considering how to proceed. Only an informed patient can provide informed consent.
Consider the following before pulling the treatment trigger:
--The vast majority of HCV patients have no symptoms and have had the disease for decades.
--Only 10-20% of HCV patients will develop cirrhosis, many of whom will function well.
--The treatment is toxic and extremely expensive.
--We have no reliable method to determine which HCV patient is destined for future complications.
--HCV patients who "respond" to treatment may have lived a normal life without treatment.
Is there a role for treatment in this disease? Of course, but I suspect that once again, medical practitioners are casting too wide a treatment net, ensnaring many folks who should be left alone.
The USPSTF just issued their draft HCV guidelines that were considerably narrower than those of the CDC. The Task Force recommends HCV screening only for those who are at high risk of the disease, such as those who used intravenous needles or received blood transfusions prior to 1992. Unlike the CDC, no mandatory screening of folks born during 1945-1965 is advised. The task force pointed out the absence of proof that widespread screening for HCV would reduce liver disease and mortality.
When the final guideline emerges, there will be criticism. Some of it may be based on the medical merits, which is fair game. Other criticism will try to game the system. There's a huge and growing HCV testing and treatment industry and gazillions of dollars at stake. Certain stakeholders will advocate policies that endorse widespread screening for HCV. Will this be only for medical reasons? Our track record on this issue isn't encouraging. Beware of conflicts of interests buried under feigned arguments to protect patients. There are 4 million Americans with HCV. Treatment with the new 3-drug regimen can cost in excess of $50,000 per patient. Do the math.
$50,000 x 4,000,000 =
We shouldn't retreat from discussing whether treating HCV makes sense. After all, it's not religion or politics.
This post by Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, appeared at MD Whistleblower. Dr. Kirsch is a full time practicing physician and writer who addresses the joys and challenges of medical practice, including controversies in the doctor-patient relationship, medical ethics and measuring medical quality. When he's not writing, he's performing colonoscopies.
Labels: gastroenterology, guest post, guidelines, health care cost, health policy, hepatitis C, less is more, MD Whistleblower, Michael Kirsch, pharmaceuticals, politics
posted by Michael Kirsch, MD at
11:00 AM
Contact ACP Internist
Send comments to ACP Internist staff at acpinternist@acponline.org.
Previous Posts
- Beware of dishes!
- QD: News Every Day--1 in 4 doctors don't consult w...
- Evidence based medicine--but which evidence?
- Should we screen all admissions for nasal MRSA
- QD: News Every Day--One in three try online inform...
- Twitter within academic medicine
- Health and handguns
- QD: News Every Day--CT scans reconsidered for scre...
- Three doctors' choices earn them scorn, accolades
- QD: News Every Day--NQF endorses 14 infectious dis...
Blog log
Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internistand ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:
Albert Fuchs,
MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP, graduated from the
University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, where he
also did his internal medicine training. Certified by the American
Board of Internal Medicine, Dr. Fuchs spent three years as a
full-time faculty member at UCLA School of Medicine before opening
his private practice in Beverly Hills in 2000.
And Thus, It Begins
Amanda Xi, ACP Medical
Student Member, is a first-year medical student at the OUWB School
of Medicine, charter class of 2015, in Rochester, Mich., from which
she which chronicles her journey through medical training from day
1 of medical school.
Zackary Berger
Zackary Berger, MD, ACP Member, is a primary care doctor and
general internist in the Division of General Internal Medicine at
Johns Hopkins. His research interests include doctor-patient
communication, bioethics, and systematic reviews.
Controversies in Hospital
Infection Prevention
Run by three ACP
Fellows, this blog ponders vexing issues in infection prevention
and control, inside and outside the hospital. Daniel J Diekema, MD,
FACP, practices infectious diseases, clinical microbiology, and
hospital epidemiology in Iowa City, Iowa, splitting time between
seeing patients with infectious diseases, diagnosing infections in
the microbiology laboratory, and trying to prevent infections in
the hospital. Michael B. Edmond, MD, FACP, is a hospital
epidemiologist in Richmond, Va., with a focus on understanding why
infections occur in the hospital and ways to prevent these
infections, and sees patients in the inpatient and outpatient
settings. Eli N. Perencevich, MD, ACP Member, is an infectious
disease physician and epidemiologist in Iowa City, Iowa, who
studies methods to halt the spread of resistant bacteria in our
hospitals (including novel ways to get everyone to wash their
hands).
db's Medical Rants
Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating
medicine and the health care system.
DrDialogue
Juliet K. Mavromatis, MD, FACP, provides a conversation about
health topics for patients and health professionals.
Dr. Mintz' Blog
Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal medicine for more
than a decade and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at an
academic medical center on the East Coast. His time is split
between teaching medical students and residents, and caring for
patients.
Everything
Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid changes in science,
medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.
FutureDocs
Vineet Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the
Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship &
Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of
Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty
hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of
hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist.
Glass Hospital
John H. Schumann, MD, FACP, provides transparency on the workings
of medical practice and the complexities of hospital care,
illuminates the emotional and cognitive aspects of caregiving and
decision-making from the perspective of an active primary care
physician, and offers behind-the-scenes portraits of hospital
sanctums and the people who inhabit them.
Gut Check
Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist at the
University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and the Program
Director for the GI & Hepatology Fellowship Program. He
specializes in diseases of the esophagus, with a strong interest in
the diagnosis and treatment of patients who have
difficult-to-manage esophageal problems such as refractory GERD,
heartburn, and chest pain.
I'm dok
Mike Aref, MD, PhD, FACP, is an academic hospitalist with an
interest in basic and clinical science and education, with
interests in noninvasive monitoring and diagnostic testing using
novel bedside imaging modalities, diagnostic reasoning, medical
informatics, new medical education modalities, pre-code/code
management, palliative care, patient-physician communication,
quality improvement, and quantitative biomedical imaging.
Informatics
Professor
William Hersh, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair, Department of Medical
Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health &
Science University, posts his thoughts on various topics related to
biomedical and health informatics.
David Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally renowned
authority on nutrition, weight management, and the prevention of
chronic disease, and an internationally recognized leader in
integrative medicine and patient-centered care.
Just Oncology
Richard Just, MD, ACP Member, has 36 years in clinical practice of
hematology and medical oncology. His blog is a joint publication
with Gregg Masters, MPH.
KevinMD
Kevin Pho, MD, ACP Member, offers one of the Web's definitive sites
for influential health commentary.
MD
Whistleblower
Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, addresses the joys and challenges of
medical practice, including controversies in the doctor-patient
relationship, medical ethics and measuring medical quality. When
he's not writing, he's performing colonoscopies.
Medical Lessons
Elaine Schattner, MD, FACP, shares her ideas on education, ethics
in medicine, health care news and culture. Her views on medicine
are informed by her past experiences in caring for patients, as a
researcher in cancer immunology, and as a patient who's had breast
cancer.
Mired in MedEd
Alexander M.
Djuricich, MD, FACP, is the Associate Dean for Continuing Medical
Education (CME), and a Program Director in Medicine-Pediatrics at
the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, where he
blogs about medical education.
More Musings
Rob Lamberts, MD, ACP Member, a med-peds and general practice
internist, returns with "volume 2" of his personal musings about
medicine, life, armadillos and Sasquatch at More Musings (of a
Distractible Kind).
Prescriptions
David M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a
small community hospital in Connecticut. His blog is a series of
musings on medicine, medical care, the health care system and
medical ethics, in no particular order.
Reflections of a Grady
Doctor
Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP, reflects on the personal side of being
a doctor in a community hospital in Atlanta.
The Blog of Paul Sufka
Paul Sufka,
MD, ACP Member, is a board certified rheumatologist in St. Paul,
Minn. He was a chief resident in internal medicine with the
University of Minnesota and then completed his fellowship training
in rheumatology in June 2011 at the University of Minnesota
Department of Rheumatology. His interests include the use of
technology in medicine.
Technology in (Medical)
Education
Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP, is interested in use of technology in
education, social media and networking, practice management and
evidence-based medicine tools, personal information and knowledge
management.
Peter A. Lipson,
MD
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a practicing internist and
teaching physician in Southeast Michigan. The blog, which has been
around in various forms since 2007, offers musings on the
intersection of science, medicine, and culture.
Why is American Health Care So Expensive?
Janice
Boughton, MD, FACP, practiced internal medicine for 20 years before
adopting a career in hospital and primary care medicine as a locum
tenens physician. She lives in Idaho when not traveling.
World's Best Site
Daniel Ginsberg, MD,
FACP, is an internal medicine physician who has avidly applied
computers to medicine since 1986, when he first wrote medically
oriented computer programs. He is in practice in Tacoma,
Washington.
Other blogs of note:
American Journal of
Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine
publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in
internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and
community-based practice.
Clinical
Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, MD, ACP
Member, associate program director at New York University Medical
Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents
and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news,
commentary and more.
Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so
he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the
Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news
of the day.
PLoS Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a
blog.
White Coat
Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by an emergency
room physician.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home