CLINICAL NEWS
The Truth About Alternative Medicine Cleaning Up Hospital Infection Risk
A surprising number of Americans believe
that alternative medicines can replace
standard treatments, according to
the American Society of Clinical
Oncology’s National Cancer
Opinion Survey. A new analysis from the Agency for Healthcare Research and
Quality brings good news for patients (and the U.S. health-
care system): The risk of hospital-acquired conditions
(HACs) has dropped substantially in recent years.
4 in 10
respondents believed that
cancer can be cured through
alternative medicines alone.
This belief is dangerous, the report authors noted, because evidence has shown that patients who replace
conventional therapies with alternative medicine have higher mortality rates.
Younger people are more likely to have this opinion: 47% of respondents aged 18-37 believed alternative
medicines could cure cancer, versus 21% of those aged 72 or older.
Source: American Society of Clinical Oncology, “National Cancer Opinion Survey,” October 2018.
Between 2014
and 2017, HACs
declined by 13%,
from 99 to 86
HACs per 1,000
discharges.
The authors estimate
that this decrease
helped prevent 20,500
hospital deaths and
saved $7.7 billion over
the 3-year span.
Source: Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality, “AHRQ
National Scorecard on Hospital-
Acquired Conditions: Updated
Baseline Rates and Preliminary
Results 2014–2017,” January 2019.
Girls Just Wanna Have Funding
The gender disparity in biomedical research starts early, with female scientists receiving substantially
smaller first-time National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants compared with male scientists, according to
a research letter published in JAMA.
The authors analyzed 53,903 NIH grants awarded to first-time principal investigators between 2006 and 2017.
Median awards were
and
165,721 for men
$
126,615 for women.
$
This gap persisted even when the scientists had similar qualifications, the authors observed. “That
means female scientists are disadvantaged from the beginning of their careers and the kind of scientific
and clinical questions they ask are less likely to be answered,” study co-author Teresa Woodruff,
PhD, said, and this has far-reaching implications for future generations of doctors. “Less diversity in
scientists means less diversity in how the next generation of clinicians are trained.”
Source: Oliveira DFM, Ma Y, Woodruff TK, et al. Comparison of National Institutes of Health grant amounts to first-time male and
female principal investigators. JAMA. 2019;321:898-900.
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