Posted on 08/02/2009 1:54:18 AM PDT by Schnucki
The Government's drug rationing watchdog says "therapeutic" injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.
Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy.
Specialists fear tens of thousands of people, mainly the elderly and frail, will be left to suffer excruciating levels of pain or pay as much as £500 each for private treatment.
The NHS currently issues more than 60,000 treatments of steroid injections every year. NICE said in its guidance it wants to cut this to just 3,000 treatments a year, a move which would save the NHS £33 million.
But the British Pain Society, which represents specialists in the field, has written to NICE calling for the guidelines to be withdrawn after its members warned that they would lead to many patients having to undergo unnecessary and high-risk spinal surgery.
Dr Christopher Wells, a leading specialist in pain relief medicine and the founder of the NHS' first specialist pain clinic, said it was "entirely unacceptable" that conventional treatments used by thousands of patients would be stopped.
"I don't mind whether some people want to try acupuncture, or osteopathy. What concerns me is that to pay for these treatments, specialist clinics which offer vital services are going to be forced to close, leaving patients in significant pain, with nowhere to go,"
The NICE guidelines admit that evidence was limited for many back pain treatments, including those it recommended. Where scientific proof was lacking, advice was instead taken from its expert group. But specialists are furious that while the group included practitioners of alternative therapies, there was no one with expertise in conventional
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
That technique works with dogs, too. It's the only way to do it.
Its amazing how so many seemingly normal Citizens are swallowing OBOZO’S Healthcare BULLPOOP Hook, Line and Sinker! When they are forced into Government Health Clinics to sit in Line for a Pakistani Intern to tell them to take an aspirin instead of consulting with their Doctors of today, they are going to scream their heads off and its going to be too Late! ALawyer actually had the guts to complain about his Doctor’s Fees! Told him We should be allowed to buy Health Insurance that ruled out Legal Action and the cost would be a stunning Savings! He went into Mental Meltdown! Tough Bullpoop! It’s TRUE!
Now, when they kill off the boomers, they can ignore the IOU's and maintain the status quo. And that is what has likely stopped every "let's make SocSec solvent again" initiative, someone saying sotto voce "but what if they aren't there to collect? anything could happen between now and then. Why waste the political capital and make your voters take the strong medicine?"
“I seriously hope that you are joking! You stuck your thumb past a predator’s razor-sharp teeth and down it’s throat and then (I assume from your comment) killed it for biting you? How would you react to someone shoving something the size of your forearm down your throat?”
Sounds like he`s proud of killing it, too. Disgusting.
I love LOL cats.
OK, I read the linked article, and it seems misleading to me. According the article, the NHS is NOT talking about doing away with steroid injections altogether, but only not paying for steroid injections IN CASES WHERE THE CAUSE OF PAIN IS NOT KNOWN. Presumably, that means no more steroid injections for PEOPLE WITH NORMAL MRIs and EMG / NCV. If you can’t walk due to back pain, and if you are relieved by a steroid injection, then I would assume that you would have an abnormal MRI, and thus would be a candidate for injection. Come to think of it, if you are over 30, there’s a pretty good chance that you have at least some changes visible on MRI, and thus would be a candidate for injection if you have pain.
The reason I think this article is misleading is partly because it includes this description:
“Iris Watkins, 80 from Appleton, in Cheshire said her life had been “transformed” by the use of therapeutic injections every two years. The pensioner began to suffer back pain in her 70s. Four years ago, despite physiotherapy treatment and the use of medication, she had reached a stage where she could barely walk.”
Uh huh. An 80 year old person is pretty much guaranteed to have MRI abnormalities. An 80 year old person who can’t walk despite physiotherapy and medication? I would be surprised if this person had a normal MRI. If she has abnormalities visible on MRI, then the cause of her pain is known. In other words, Ms. Watkins, and people like her, would NOT be affected by this new rule.
Don’t forget, epidural steroid injection (injection of steroids near the spinal cord) DOES have a complication rate; the highest published rate I’ve ever heard of was just under 20% (!) but a more normal rate is ~ 2% (yes, that’s an order of magnitude difference. That almost 20% rate is probably not the norm). I mention this to point out that there is a reason, beyond the money, that doing an steroid injection on everyone may be a bad idea.
In general, lots of people have back pain. Not all those people will benefit from an injection. Some people will have complications from the injection. Therefore, reserving the injections for people who have known pathology might make sense.
Just a thought.
It’s strictly a dollar (well, pound sterling) calculation. A ton of morphine is cheaper than an ounce of steroids.
Another dopey vet once asked me to hold a cat on a table while he shaved (with a buzz shaver) a spot on the cat’s neck to get a place for a blood test.
“Violent” would be understating the cat’s reaction. Before I could blink I had a finger bitten to the knuckle and a cat cowering on the floor. For almost a decade afterwards, the cat would go berserk at the first sight of my Norelco.
I have never, ever seen any other vet try that with any cat. Later I found the “dopey” vet also kept cats in rickety standalone stacked cages.
The hard part for me is catching the dog, when my dogs hear a pill bottle open, they run like hell, LOL!
I am 50 and have had steroid injections in my back for the last 3 years, but finally told them no more because I was gaining so much weight which makes my arthritic hip (hip dysplasia from birth) hurt worse. As I have never had major surgery before, I am putting off my hip replacement as long as possible. I survive on Mobic and Darvocet, do water aerobics in a warm therapeutic pool and hit the hot tub afterward to keep the pain under control.
My sister also has back problems, we refer to ourselves as the "Steroid Sisters", because we have both developed the dreaded "moon face"...that is another reason I went off of the steroids.
You are correct, this bill must die.
Your poor, dear thing.....:(
I will keep you in my prayers and hope with all my heart that you, your sister and mother find relief from your pain.
IMHO, it’s a matter of conditioning.
Take the pill bottle with you into the bedroom. Shut the door. Quietly open the bottle, remove the pill and close the bottle. Go back into the house. Greet your dog warmly.
Gather a goodly supply of his/her fav treat. Give them some of the treat. Give them the pill. Give them the rest of the treat.
With time your dog will come to relate the pill to getting a huge treat and will not object as much. Always do the pill popping and treating in the same place in the house. Dogs are very much creatures of habit.
Our 10 y/o Shepherd/Sharpei, who weighs 110 lbs. is the worst, he will claw my husband's legs trying to climb into his lap if he even thinks I have a pill in my hand and won't come to me for days afterwards...he's just a big wuss about everything. Hates guns, firecrackers, thunder and even my hubby biting Tootsie Pops.
I have opted for liquid forms when possible, such as for my 2 y/o German Shepherd's vitamins for his dry skin. He gets "juice" (said enthusiastically to him so he gets excited), which is beef broth laced with the liquid vitamin, every night. We tried olive oil on his food per the vet, but he wouldn't touch his food and he hates topical sprays and ointments, he yelps like we are trying to kill him. He is a "special needs" dog, he will never grow up mentally as he had a lack of oxygen to the brain (heat stroke) due to being boxed up and left in 100 degree weather outside a fire station when he was 4 wks. old. He was rescuscitated by the firemen, only one other littermate survived.
My 12 y/o Collie/St. Bernard is the only one that is not as bad, he doesn't like them, but will let me put it down his throat because he knows it makes him feel better, as he has arthritis and is getting senile. He's lost his front teeth, so I can usually slide a pill right in ; ) I finally found a chewable arthritis formula medication recently that he will eat (after giving several expensive packages away to a friend for her not-so-picky dog of stuff he wouldn't touch) so at least I don't have to force him on that one any more. Given that they were so abused previously, I hate to force anything on them. They are spoiled rotten.
Abused and special needs dogs can be a real joy.
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