{"id":803,"date":"2013-12-18T18:00:30","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T17:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/?p=803"},"modified":"2013-12-15T23:35:49","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T22:35:49","slug":"populations-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/2013\/12\/18\/populations-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Populations matter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blood.co.uk\/index.aspx\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.southleedslife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/give-blood.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"72\" \/><\/a>So, as I occasionally bang on about, I spend a fair bit of time with children and young people with cancer. We do a lot of transfusions of blood components in this population, frequently because we heartlessly pour toxins into them in order to try to kill of their malignancy.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been debating hard recently about the nature of these transfusions, and if a restrictive strategy should be used (using a lower level to trigger transfusion, and using less blood poured in.). It has been shown to be effective in critical care in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJM199902113400601\">adults <\/a>and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMoa066240\">children\u00a0<\/a>but debate remains as to if it&#8217;s applicable outside this population.<\/p>\n<p>What is the problem with different populations?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Well, put straighforwardly, it&#8217;s frequently <a title=\"Do children and adults really differ?\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/2010\/05\/09\/do-children-and-adults-really-differ\/\">NOTHING<\/a>. There&#8217;s an instinctive dislike of change we all have and saying &#8216;it&#8217;s not from my backyard&#8217; is a good and comfortable defense. But sometimes populations DO differ; but to suggest that this might be the case you need to explain WHY it is that your patients will have a different response to the intervention than those in the studies. (The malignancy argument goes: critical illness = normal marrow, relatively brief duration of illness, danger from large fluid infusions and shifts &#8230; malignancy = knackered marrow, year(s) of treatment, ability to manage fluid shifts.)<\/p>\n<p>Then you need to look for differences between &#8216;your&#8217; subgroup and others &#8230; such as this from the <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/14651858.CD002042.pub3\/full\">Cochrane review<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/store\/mrw_content\/cochrane\/clsysrev\/articles\/CD002042\/image_n\/nCD002042-CMP-001-04.png?v=1&amp;t=hp8v5y43&amp;s=87ac5e0e323ce1eb0386212149c282fe7ff58469\" width=\"850\" height=\"846\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And then &#8230; well. What do we do in the face of little evidence to guide practice?<\/p>\n<p>(Hint &#8211; have a look <a title=\"Where does EBM go without E?\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/2013\/08\/28\/where-does-ebm-go-without-e\/\">here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Archi<!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, as I occasionally bang on about, I spend a fair bit of time with children and young people with cancer. We do a lot of transfusions of blood components in this population, frequently because we heartlessly pour toxins into them in order to try to kill of their malignancy. We&#8217;ve been debating hard recently [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/2013\/12\/18\/populations-matter\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archimedes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}