Lawyers Blog

What Every Patient Should Know About “Number Needed to Treat”

June 16, 2018AdminMedical MalpracticeLeave a Comment

Most drug advertisements today include a lot of superficial information touting the benefits of medications, including statistics that can make treatments look fantastic and benign. While the statistics these drug makers cite may be accurate, they’re almost always only telling part of the story.

One of the numbers used in assessing the effectiveness of a drug is the “number needed to treat,” or NNT. As a consumer, knowing the NNT can help you make important decisions about whether or not to take a medication. Yet rarely – if ever – is the NNT included in drug ads.

So what is the number needed to treat? It’s the number of patients that would need to be treated in order to achieve the desirable effect or outcome in one patient. For instance, suppose you have a drug that’s intended to prevent stroke. You conduct studies and determine the number needed to treat is 10. What does that mean? It means you would have to treat 10 people with that drug in order to prevent a stroke in one person.

The number needed to treat is a simple way to estimate the potential benefit to be expected from a drug or course of treatment, and it can be an especially helpful marker with respect to comparing one treatment or drug to another.

As noted, the number needed to treat is very rarely included in drug advertising, especially if that number. After all, if the NNT for a new cholesterol drug is 80, that means essentially you’d have a one in 80 chance of having a successful outcome as a result of the medication. Depending on the potential side effects caused by the drug and other factors, you may decide that the benefits and risks just don’t add up.

The NNT can also play an important role in determining negligence of a drug manufacturer whose drug caused significant injury or death.

Understanding the Difference Between Absolute Risk and Relative Risk

May 30, 2018AdminMedical Malpractice, Patient SafetyLeave a Comment

Turn on the television at just about any time of the day or night, and chances are pretty good that within the first 30 minutes, you will see a commercial promoting a drug. That’s because pharmaceuticals are big business, and the pharmaceutical companies know the best way to make money is to make sure consumers know what their drugs can do.

There’s nothing wrong with advertising in general; but problems can arise when the claims a company makes distort the truth without actually being out-and-out lies. Statistics are often used to skew messages in advertising and elsewhere. And while that practice can be misleading, when it comes to claims regarding medications, this practice can be downright dangerous.

Most drug commercials talk about risk in terms of how well their medications work to prevent whatever ailments they’re intended to treat. But drug makers usually talk about relative risks, often completely leaving out the absolute risks determined by clinical studies.

Absolute risk is your overall risk of developing a disease or condition over time as compared to everyone else. We all have absolute risks when it comes to developing common diseases like heart disease. We can say one out of 10 people will develop X disease in his or her lifetime, which is meaningful when it comes time to determine whether we want to have treatment or not.

Relative risk, on the other hand, compares the risks between two specific groups, often producing results and percentages that are skewed. That makes it difficult to make educated decisions about whether or not to take a medication, for instance, and it can also misstate the actual – or absolute – risks associated with taking a drug.

Understanding absolute and relative risks is also vitally important in legal cases determining negligence of drug manufacturers, and it’s one of the primary reasons why having a skilled attorney is critical in any negligence or medical malpractice case.

Four Medical Problems That Are More Common in Summer

March 12, 2018AdminGeneralLeave a Comment

Summers are filled with picnics, barbecues, beach trips and other fun activities, but they can also be a time of increased risks for specific types of disease. While it may seem like most illnesses occur during the cold months of winter, summer brings its own health issues, including these four common problems:

Asthma
Summer staples like campfires and smoke from barbecue grills, significant changes in the weather including increases in humidity – even chlorine – can all increase the risk of asthma problems and allergic reactions, according to the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.
Swimmer’s ear
Whether you swim in a pool, the ocean or a lake, the ear can trap water, and that can lead to infections. Swimmer’s ear is responsible for about 2.4 million trips to the doctor each year. Drying your ears thoroughly is the best way to prevent swimmer’s ear from occurring.
Food poisoning
The warm summer weather provides ideal conditions for bacterial growth, and that means the risk for food poisoning increases dramatically. If you’re planning a barbecue or picnic, use these tips from the USDA to avoid food-borne illnesses.
Lyme disease
Carried by tiny deer ticks hardly larger than the head of a pin, the CDC says Lyme disease affects tens of thousands of people each year. The agency provides tips on how to prevent tick bites and how to remove ticks once they’ve latched on.

Enjoying lazy summer days doesn’t mean being trapped indoors. Being aware of the risks of illness and disease that are most likely to occur in the summer is the best way to stay healthy and enjoy fun in the sun.

Six Surprising Facts about Heat Stroke

March 11, 2018AdminPatient SafetyLeave a Comment

Heat stroke can be a serious danger during the summer months. Understanding what puts you at risk for heat stroke and what symptoms it causes are essential for your health and safety. Here’s what you need to know to stay safe:

Heat kills an average of 658 people every year in the U.S., according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that tracked heat-related deaths from 1999 to 2009.
The weather doesn’t have to be super-hot to create the conditions for heat stroke. People who play or work in direct sunlight as well as those who engage in physical activity outdoors can begin to experience symptoms of heat stroke while temperatures are in the 80s and humidity is 80 percent or more, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Even if you’re physically active, you can still be at an increased risk for heat stroke. People who are elderly or very young aren’t able to regulate temperatures as well as others, making them more susceptible to heat stroke. Those who are overweight or obese as well as those who have chronic diseases also stand at elevated risk, as do those who aren’t used to high temperatures.
Some medications can increase your risk for heat stroke, including blood pressure medications, antidepressants and ADHD medications.
Feeling hot isn’t always the primary symptom of heat stroke. In fact, some people first develop headache or light-headedness as the key symptoms. As heat stroke progresses, it can cause nausea and muscle cramps.
While it may seem logical to sweat more when you’re hot, in heat stroke, you actually stop sweating as your body’s temperature regulation controls shut down.