Primary Care Corner with Geoffrey Modest MD: the state of maternity health in the US

the US health care system seems to have achieved even higher levels of dysfunction.  today’s new york times has a front-page article on the exorbitant cost and simultaneous deterioration of the maternity care system (see http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/health/american-way-of-birth-costliest-in-the-world.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130701&_r=0 ). the gist of the article is: –several health insurance policies no longer cover maternity care, leaving it up to women/families […]

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Will we ever learn? Probably not, because we are too confident: Heart failure drug doesn’t prevent heart failure, and sepsis drug doesn’t decrease mortality from sepsis.

 They all sound good at first. A decade later they don’t sound so good. Human recombinant activated protein C (HR APC; drotrecogin alfa; Xigris) addresses the pathophysiology of sepsis. It is low in sepsis and associated with death. Replacing it should work. So a randomized trial was done in 2001 (http://bit.ly/vQ0f5B) showing that it decreased […]

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