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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: skinowski who wrote (7249)	6/30/2009 8:26:37 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

A stress test every few years... helps to know where you "stand". What does it tell you? That you don't have an nearly fully blocked artery? I had one just recently because it's part of the standard protocol, it wasn't worth picking a fight with my cardiologist over, and it didn't cost me anything but half a day. I learned that I can crank my heart rate up past the established maximum for my age and raise my systolic pressure past 200 without anything blowing up. I'm not sure how useful that information is given that I never exercise at even close to that rate and my BP hasn't seen anything upward of 120 in ages. I already knew that there was no calcium in my coronary arteries just a couple of years ago so the probability of my having a blockage great enough to show up on an EKG was about zero. The doctor even acknowledged that. But we did it anyway. Her office is set up to crank out that and other tests. I had all of them. I've known two young people who died of heart attacks within months of a clean stress test. I don't see what they tell you that's useful for primary prevention. So that's another arena in which I wonder what's with the establishment and their standard protocols. My original point was about confidence in the government armed by the medical establishment determining the protocols. This is just another example of me scratching my head re why we do what we do. I have to wonder whether routine EKG's are effective for primary prevention let alone cost effective. I have accumulated so many examples. That is why I have started to question, generally, whether the establishment is all that sharp. You know, much of the chatter about health care reform is that we need more prevention, which makes sense in concept but it depends on how it plays out. If that means a stress test every few years for everyone, gotta wonder... About a year or so back I heard a cardiologist discuss a study showing that discontinuation of a statin is associated with an increase in "events". I will look into that. Thanks. I told the cardiologist what my plans were and she was opposed but didn't offer any reason other than that statins are standard treatment and a few verbal head scratches as to why in the world anyone would not just go along. She finally offered that maybe a week off would be OK. I didn't pursue the discussion further. I supposed that after a week you might be able to determine that your aches and pains are or aren't a function of the statins but you can't tell that soon how that affects your cholesterol or inflammation. It seems to me that there's something inherently problematic about widely disseminating a drug that people can't ever quit, even if their circumstances change. You can't even go off it to test whether or not your circumstances have changed. I cut back dramatically on BP meds and will probably go off them entirely soon because my BP is running too low. That was an effective test. Ought to be able to do something similar with a statin.