Links for Wednesday, September 5, 2018: docs are nervous about weight loss meds, risky low-carb diets, why I'm not a pediatrician, and continuity of care is good
Why don't more docs prescribe weight loss medications?
Speculation: 1) cost (and by extension, prior authorization requests); 2) residual fear from fen-phen, as one of the docs interviewed alluded to. We can surely put this to bed, since the current crop of meds has been on the market much longer than fen-phen had been when its harm was revealed; 3) nihilism. Five percent weight loss is meaningful from a medical perspective, but unless the doc is consciously, prospectively measuring outcomes like blood pressure, lipids, and fasting sugars, it won't knock her socks off. Patients won't be thanking her for getting them ready for bikini season; and 4) the old Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) for Qsymia was such a PIA that it scarred some docs to prescribing these meds.
Can we stick a fork in low-carbohydrate diets? (Ba Dum Tss)
What's a 32% increase in mortality among friends? Investigators (in a study that, to my knowledge, has not yet been published, so caveat emptor) found an association between the lowest quartiles of carbohydrate intake and death:
NHANES data. Model 1 is unadjusted for other risk factors. Model 2 is adjusted. These are ugly, ugly numbers.
Remember: we can't draw causality from this. There is some chance that people who are sick and more likely to die from heart disease, cancer, or stroke are more likely to adopt low-carbohydrate diets. But it doesn't seem likely. The people at highest risk in this study were those over age 55 and "non-obese."
Reason # 1,001 I'm not a pediatrician:
Can. Not. Do. It.
Special shout-out to the 100 cell phone text alerts during the video.