Third hand information
I’ve often heard tales of world leaders finidng out important information via CNN, and I felt a bit like that today. My first patient of the day told me that she’d just heard on the news that her arthritis tablet, Vioxx, has just been taken off the market due to an increased risk of heart disease, and she asked me what the deal was and could I give her something else instead? Well it was the first I’d heard, and I was unable to get any more information since the internet has been down at our surgery all week. By the time the offical fax came through from the drug company an hour or so later, I’d already had another 2 more patients asking me about it, whom I dutifully changed onto the similar tablet Celebrex, still unable to check anything out on the net and, just trusting that Celebrex (another slightly older cox-2 inhibitor) was not implicated in the problems. It wasn’t until 15 minutes before I left work in the afternoon that a fax finally came through from the company that makes Celebrex, confirming that it is safe to use, by which time I’d already swapped about 6 or 7 people onto it. The whole process made me realise how dependant on the media, and now on the internet, we really are. I was feeling a bit lost for information but I’d imagine compared to 10 years ago having all this information being disseminated to the patients, and to me, within a day is still pretty impressive. Would have been nice to have known about it before my patients though. And if I had known a day or two earlier (and had some free money) I would have bought shares in the company that makes Celebrex, the prescription of which would have skyrocketed today.
Categories : General Practice | 0 Comments
