Doctors treating patients who are hospitalized for severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) ignore recommended treatments more than 90 percent of the time, costing patients more money and increasing the length of their hospital stays, a new study published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association concludes.
Guidelines for treatment recommend giving such patients low doses of anti-inflammatory steroids orally. However, doctors instead frequently give patients high doses of the drugs intravenously under the premise that "more is better," according to Dr. Peter Lindenauer, the study's author and director of Baystate Medical Center's Quality of Care Research in Springfield, Mass.
"When patients come into the hospital [with serious breathing problems], the doctor's gut instinct is that intravenous is better," Lindenauer said, reports The Republican. However, research has shown that low-dose oral steroids are "better" and "cheaper," and ultimately shorten hospital stays, he added.
The study looked at 79,985 patients admitted with "acute exacerbation of COPD" to 414 hospitals across the U.S. in 2006 and 2007. Of those patients, only 6,220 received the recommended oral steroid treatment, while the remaining 73,765 were given intravenous steroid treatments.
To learn more:
- read this article in The Republican
- here's the study's abstract