Many patients across the world are receiving unnecessary treatment. A medicine study suggests that the use of medicine and health care worldwide are both overused and underused, which put patients to preventable danger and waste resources.
A group of internationally-known experts reveal that at least 33 percent of medical procedures are done inappropriately including hysterectomies, thyroid cancer surgeries, antibiotic treatments and more. The group added that money wasted in unnecessary treatments can largely affect the sustainability of the healthcare system, costing $210 billion in 2010 in the United States alone.
According to Vikas Saini, president of the U.S. Lown Institute in Boston and one of the lead authors of the study, this issue is caused by greed, competing interests and poor citizen information. He added that this creates "an ecosystem of poor healthcare delivery," cited Reuters.
In a medicine study published in The Lancet on Sunday, Jan. 8, the researchers said up to 70 percent of hysterectomy (surgery to remove a woman's uterus) and at least 25 percent of knee replacements in Australia were unnecessary. It added that some of the treatments were done for financial gain in medical fees.
Meanwhile, a common type unharmful thyroid tumor in South Korea are revealed to be overdiagnosed. Many patients undergo surgery for thyroid cancer even though it does not necessarily cause harm which might lead to vocal cord paralysis. At least 57 percent of patients in China also receives inappropriate antibiotics. Other overused procedures highlighted in the study include vitamin D tests, allergy tests, mammograms, colonoscopies, MRI scans and even Caesarian sections in deliveries.
"Physicians routinely act in conformity with their financial interests. Under fee-for-service payment, many specialties deliver higher volumes of services, distorted referral rates, and lower prevention activity than with fixed payment schemes, such as, capitation and salary," the researchers revealed on the said medicine study.
