Doctors often not told of drugs' harmful effects during sale

[erinc14]

Doctors often not told of drugs' harmful effects during sales visits: study

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/doctors-of ... z2Q4tKqoA9

[HappyPoet]

Thanks, erinc

Shows that patients really need to look out for themselves. Example: A patient presents with a new symptom that is really a side effect from a current medication, but the doctor ignorantly treats the symptom with a new medication instead of adjusting or changing the original medication.

[blossom]

don't know how much this may help and maybe some here already do this. if you have a good pharmacy you deal with and you can ask the pharmacist about side effects or drug interaction they have seemed more knowledgable than the dr.'s.

a for instance, recently a very good friend of mine who nearly died from a botched up casting of a broken ankle which caused compression syndrome which caused blood clots to hit her lungs"noone knows how she lived through this" and now that the veins are damaged from the clots the dr. has her on comuadin "which makes her very sick" but because she is still throwing clots that basiclly all started because of the botched cast. because of being run down so bad from all this she keeps getting flu, chest colds, bronchidis etc. "TWICE NOW THE "DOCTOR" HAS ORDERED ANTIBIOTICS THAT WOULD HAVE TURNED TO A "VERY" BAD SITUATION HAD SHE TAKEN THEM WITH HER OTHER MEDS. THAT SAME DR. HAD PRESCRIBED.-------BOTH TIMES "THANK GOD" THE DRUGGIST WAS ON THE BALL AND POINTED THIS OUT AND DID NOT FILL THEM.

pretty scarey. only a broken ankle---all this brought in to her life, by incompetence on the dr.'s involved.

[HarryZ]

You can imagine how the sales reps for the CRABs as well as Tysabri present their drugs! The FDA has slapped the hands of the drug companies involved for how they falsely promote their medications and in some instances fine them. But if you talk to the drug reps, their response is it's "part of the cost of doing business" or "we just have to up the honorariums" to get the docs to prescribe the product. Not very comforting.

Harry

[erinc14]

[centenarian100]

You can imagine how the sales reps for the CRABs as well as Tysabri present their drugs! The FDA has slapped the hands of the drug companies involved for how they falsely promote their medications and in some instances fine them. But if you talk to the drug reps, their response is it's "part of the cost of doing business" or "we just have to up the honorariums" to get the docs to prescribe the product. Not very comforting.

Harry

This is a serious issue.

I believe one of the root problems is that patients don't have to pay full price for the drugs, so drug companies can mark up their drugs absurdly so long as physicians and patients believe them to be at least marginally superior to alternatives.

The idea of a middle class individual with MS paying $30,000/year for a drug with a 30% efficacy is laughable, but when an insurance company is picking up the tap, moral hazard takes over.

drug reps are generally well paid aggressive salespersons. If they can convince one neurologist to prescribe copaxone three times over the course of a year, they have justified their salary. It is difficult for doctors to keep up with all of the minutiae of new drugs, and they are not free from bias.

Prior to recent changes in regulations, doctors used to receive outrageous gifts from drug reps which were effectively kick backs/compensation.

Even now, a lot of academic physicians receive very significant compensation for giving talks and marketing drugs/devices to other physicians in the field.