The fifth leading cause of death in the United States is not a disease, but avoidable medical errors, a conference heard yesterday (10/17/04).
Professor Emeritus William Hammond of Duke University, the keynote speaker at SingHealth's Scientific Conference, said a study had shown that as many as 98,000 patients warded in U.S. hospitals die each year as a result of mistakes, such as accidental drug overdoses, mismatched blood types or wrong treatments. "If deaths caused by lack of treatment were included, the number would be much higher," he said.

For example, family doctors all too often do not do anything when patients' tests show abnormal results. As a result, only 45% of diabetics, 54% of asthmatics and 76% of people suffering from breast cancer receive care.

Prof Hammond told the hundreds of doctors and nurses at the three-day medical conference that such errors were found in hospitals around the world, not just in the US. He attributes the high error rate largely to lack of information at the point and time of care. He also spoke of the need for chronic care management. In the US, chronic patients account for 75% of health-care costs.

Some older chronic patients are badly managed because doctors do not take the time and effort to find out if they can afford the medicine prescribed. If they can't, he said, doctors should look at cheaper alternatives, or they can be sure patients will end up not taking the medicine they need.

Spinal Problems Linked to Organ & Immune System Issues in Children
(10-15-04 Issue of the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research)
The process of programming of the central nervous system with respect to locomotion and posture begins within a few months after birth. This study revealed a pattern of spinal problems associated with many organic and immune complaints. These spinal problems should be discovered as early as possible in a child's development to effect a correction.

Two interesting and contrasting stories this week cover, on the one hand, more of the same about the dangers of medicine and, on the other, the importance of insuring a healthy and functional nervous system in children from an early age. The research about children was done with 650 children under chiropractic care and found important connections between learning to walk, distortions in the child's pelvis and the development of other types of health problems.