Only a few weeks have passed since I last wrote about negative trials for invasive therapy in pulmonary embolism. You wouldn’t think I would need to spend more time talking about negative research, but the HI-PETHO trial is different, because it is reported as positive, and some people seem to […]
Evidence Based Medicine
327 posts
Despite incredibly underwhelming evidence from the outset, a massive amount of money was spent (or wasted) on Paxlovid during the COVID pandemic. Some of the issues are endemic to medical science. When we allow companies to test their own products with billions of dollars on the line, the results are […]
I think there are some very interesting papers in here this month. There are a couple big RCTs, but if you aren’t in the mood for EBM right now, I suggest at least having a look at the final paper, and imagine yourself volunteering to participate.
Addictions are incredibly challenging to treat in the emergency department, although hopefully everyone has accumulated a few wins with suboxone over recent years, and so maintains at least a modicum of optimism. Methamphetamine is much less common around me, but the primary drug of abuse in many areas of the […]
It is almost impossible to summarize a year’s worth of medical research in a 15 minute talk, but given that limitation, here are the articles that I selected as the most interesting or important for this year’s North York General Emergency Medicine Update:
I have written fairly extensively about the management of high risk PE. Despite their growing popularity, I have remained quite skeptical of catheter directed therapies. If you are going to give a thrombolytic, my sense is that it is going to be just as effective if given through a peripheral […]
Although guidelines have long suggested higher blood pressure targets in spinal cord injury, that recommendation has never been based on high quality evidence. (Walters 2013; Sanchez 2020) (This is the first ever RCT.) We have a bad habit of treating numbers in medicine, and often making things worse. (Remember the […]
At this point, most people in the emergency medicine and critical care worlds just assume that balanced (ie, 1:1:1) transfusion is a proven intervention, and the focus has mostly moved on the the potential of whole blood. I am in an almost nonexistent minority when I argue that balanced transfusion […]
Classic medicine: running high cost RCTs that are too small to give real answers Préterre C, Gaultier A, Obadia M, Vignal C, Mourand I, Plat J, Sablot D, Gaudron M, Rodier G, Godeneche G, Urbanczyk C, Marc G, Massardier E, Adam S, Boulanger M, Marcel S, Mechtouff L, Ronzière T, […]