Friday, February 10, 2006
Clinical Significance
MCS e'd me this morning with the following:
It's always a good idea to keep in mind that medicine, because it is fundamentally a science, is dynamic. Our current information explosion has rendered it extremely dynamic, a fact that none of us have failed to note, especially when "clinically controlled trial" results contradict one another week after week. Relying on gut instinct isn't always a good idea, either, since our "guts" are usually conditioned by our environment and our knowledge about our taken for granted environments is changing so rapidly that, for the most part, our "guts" lag behind.
No advice, this time. Just an observation. It's a minefield out there, folks. If you're managing someone's health, step carefully and continually hone your tracking skills. And, don't mis-take the word "doctor" for the word "god".
Later.
I researched alkaline phas this morning and found this: "a decreased serum alkaline phas may be an indicator of a chronic disease state." Well, that fits Mom, but other than that there was no information to make me worry.As it turned out, though, I called her before I made it to my computer, this morning, in order to report on the doctor's office calling about the Mom's low HA1c and the glipizide thing. We've both been doing a lot of online and lab book medical research, lately, spurred by Mom's last blood draw results. We've run into so many instances of the phrase "not clinically significant" that we got a little crazy and segued into a fun little riff off it. The upshot is that we wondered how many conditions were considered "not clinically significant" 10, 15, 20 or more years ago that now garner great "clinical signficance" and vice versa.
It's always a good idea to keep in mind that medicine, because it is fundamentally a science, is dynamic. Our current information explosion has rendered it extremely dynamic, a fact that none of us have failed to note, especially when "clinically controlled trial" results contradict one another week after week. Relying on gut instinct isn't always a good idea, either, since our "guts" are usually conditioned by our environment and our knowledge about our taken for granted environments is changing so rapidly that, for the most part, our "guts" lag behind.
No advice, this time. Just an observation. It's a minefield out there, folks. If you're managing someone's health, step carefully and continually hone your tracking skills. And, don't mis-take the word "doctor" for the word "god".
Later.
