Replies

I insist that this era in medicine will go down as the most barbaric in history.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That comment is right on target and I’m always telling my family members that they need to do their own medical research in detail BEFORE visiting any family doctor for anything. There has been numerous postings here over the years about prostate health and PSA testing and several times I’ve posted reminders of what Dr. Thomas Stamey said.... for the record, the initial use of the PSA testing as a tool for determining prostate cancer is based on Dr. Stamey’s research but a number of years later and with the benefit of more research, he had a totally different opinion that was quite different than his original study conclusions.... https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2004/stanford-researcher-declares-psa-era-is-over-in-predicting-prostate-cancer-risk.html

I insist that this era in medicine will go down as the most barbaric in history.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part 2 comment on agreeing with this statement...

My comment that follows has nothing to do with prostate health but it generally has to do with the concept of trusting what medical people say....and I’ll just say that I’m not a doctor.

I have a close family member who had a blackout a few months ago and has been subject to a lot of ‘experimentation’ since then with different drugs, strengths, dosages etc. The doctor’s clinic wanted to keep track of what impact the drugs were having on heart rate, blood pressure etc. which sounds like a reasonable and smart thing to do. So... every day, data is submitted from home BP machines along with other stuff (the family has 3 BP machines that generally agree quite closely with each other plus some other toys).

This past week it was noticed by the family that the heart rate was consistently falling under 30 bpm and so a trip to emergency was warranted and that took place on Friday. I wasn’t particularly worried because I wasn’t confident in the heartbeat readings but certainly went along with the idea of further evaluation in the hospital. Why was I not confident in the readings? When I first heard of the low pulse rate a few days earlier, I checked it out with my own oximeter and a Kardiomobile and indeed the heart rate was under 30 as measured by these two instruments.... and so at this point, there was a total of 5 home devices that all provided data that was in agreement that the heart rate was under 30. However, the advantage of the Kardiomobile data is that the actual pulse signature can be observed and when I counted the actual pulses and worked out the heart rate, it came to just under 60 bpm.... in fact, it was exactly double what all 5 instruments were saying. What my observation of the Kardiomobile pulse signatures revealed was an irregular heat beat where two pulses were a bit closer together followed by a larger gap followed by two pulses closer together etc. What all 5 of these devices showed was a heartbeat under 30 which essentially meant that none of the devices could handle an irregular heartbeat and the two pulses that were closer together were being counted as one beat.

Once the ‘patient’ was in the hospital connected to a 12 lead EKG, it all became apparent. I had taken an oximeter along with me to the hospital and while the hospital’s EKG was showing a consistent heart beat of 58 bpm, the $20 oximeter that I brought along and slipped on to the patient’s finger was showing 29... yup, exactly half of what it really was.

So all this time for months of patient review/analysis and trying to sort out drug prescriptions, they were all basing it on a pulse rate of 1/2 of what it actually was. Is an irregular heart rate still a problem? I’m sure it is but that is a totally separate issue from thinking that the pulse rate is half of what it really is....And why did it take me, a non-medical person, to point this out to all these boneheads? The amount of time lost and the potential for very serious consequences (beyond the consequences already realized) was very huge.