U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) thinks U.S. health-care system is best in the world, but the statistics say otherwise, reports Casey Selix of Minnpost.com.

Expect to hear and read a lot of heart research news coming out of Barcelona and the European Society of Cardiology there this week.

Larry Husten on Cardiobrief.org writes about a study missing its primary endpoint, and an academic medical center news release that doesn’t even mention that – even though the drugmakers’ news release actually did prominently feature that fact!

Let me remind you of a study earlier this year by Woloshin & Schwartz and colleagues that concluded:

Press releases from academic medical centers often promote research that has uncertain relevance to human health and do not provide key facts or acknowledge important limitations.

The documentary based on Maggie Mahar’s book airs on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS tonight.

I had the honor of hosting Maggie on the University of Minnesota campus for the world premier showing of the film. I’m pleased to see that the film will get this broader audience on PBS tonight.

No surprise. Just another terrible example of the one-sided – potentially harmful – information often disseminated on the network TV morning programs. See the latest review of the CBS Early Show on HealthNewsReview.org

It wraps up a very good week for former tennis star John McEnroe. But not so good for men who may have seen him on TV.

* A prime time appearance on CNN’s Larry King Live promoting prostate cancer screening
* A CBS Early Show appearance promoting prostate cancer screening

And he was getting paid all the time by a drug company – something clearly noted on the website that McEnroe promoted – but something CBS never disclosed on the air.

GlaxoSmithKline funded and helped develop this campaign, including providing compensation to Mr. McEnroe.

CBS merely turned over the network to this drug company sponsored message – a message that has the support of the American Urological Association but that lacks the support of other respected medical organizations such as the American Cancer Society and the US Preventive Services Task Force.

Shameful in its one-sided, imbalanced, incomplete approach, treating McEnroe’s message as gospel.

A study in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine looks deeper into the radiation risks from medical imaging scans.

Key quotes on the study in a New York Times story:

“These procedures have a cost, not just in terms of dollars, but in terms of radiation risk,” said the study’s lead author.

“I think the central driver is more about culture than anything else,” co-author Dr. Harlan Krumholz said. “People use imaging instead of examining the patient; they use imaging instead of talking to the patient. Patients should be asking the question: ‘Do I really need this test? Is the information in this test going to help in the decision-making process?’ “

In an editorial accompanying the paper, Dr. Michael S. Lauer, director of prevention and epidemiology at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, called for large clinical trials that would assess whether the scans improve care and lead to better outcomes for patients.

“Were we to insist that all, or nearly all, procedures be studied in well-designed trials, we could answer many critical clinical questions,” Dr. Lauer wrote.

Until then, patients and physicians should discuss the risk of the tests and keep close track of the overall radiation dose that patients are receiving, he wrote, adding, “We have to think and talk explicitly about the elements of danger in exposing our patients to radiation.”

A newly developed animal model for the painful nerve condition known as sciatica should help scientists diagnose and treat it, as per Duke University bioengineers and surgeons. Sciatica is not a single disorder, but rather a diverse range of symptoms, such as numbness or pain from the lower back to the feet, radiating leg pain or difficulty in controlling the leg. It is often caused by compression, or pinching, of any of the five nerve roots that combine to make up the sciatic nerve. These roots are the parts of the nerve that pass through openings in the spine to the spinal cord……..

Two important studies on health care decision-making in the journal PLoS Medicine were nicely summarized by MedPage Today. Excerpts:

How doctors portray clinical risks and benefits — statistically and visually — can influence the decisions patients make about healthcare, and whether those decisions reflect their own values, two randomized studies found. …

One study asked patients whether they would take statins to prevent coronary heart disease (CHD) at a cost of $50 a month, knowing the risks and benefits of taking the drugs.

They found that people were more likely to choose treatment when the data were presented as relative risk reduction — for example, telling patients they would be 30% less likely to develop CHD by taking statins — rather than as absolute summary measures.

However, far more participants believed their understanding of and satisfaction with risk information — and their confidence in their decisions — were greater when natural frequency data were presented.

It seems like every day on HealthNewsReview.org we hammer away at stories that give only relative risk data – not absolute risk data as well. This is really important stuff – as shown in these studies.

The editors of the journal commented:

“It is clear … that there is the potential for shared decision-making to be biased through the adoption of more persuasive presentations — such as relative statistics. As a result, the underlying principle of shared decision-making — that of empowering patients to make decisions most compatible with their values — can be undermined.”