1.5m people were wrongly told they risk heart disease

1.5m wrongly told they risk heart disease - Guardian

Extract:

"Thousands of people have been wrongly told they are in danger of developing life-threatening heart diseases because of flaws in the way doctors routinely calculate the risk, according to a study of more than a million people published today.

Current estimates of the number at risk of cardiovascular diseases are 1.5 million too high, the report says, suggesting the anti-cholesterol drugs statins are massively and needlessly over-prescribed, inflating the £2bn annual bill to the NHS.

The study in the British Medical Journal made a series of other significant discoveries. It found that white middle-aged men have a lower risk of heart disease than previously thought and women from poorer backgrounds have a significantly higher risk. It also found one in three women in their 60s are at risk of heart disease, a figure previously thought to be one in four.

Concern over the misdiagnosis of heart disease will be compounded by a separate study due today from the Healthcare Commission. It will raise concern over the way the 300 healthcare trusts in England and Wales are monitoring the problem. A third of them were unable to provide details of the treatment being given to patients.

The HC said the number reported as having heart failure was 140,000 fewer than expected. While it is unsure whether the shortfall is a statistical blip, the study from the BMJ highlights how many thousands of people will probably be given the wrong treatment anyway."

I have written before about the overprescribing of statins...)o: - Click on the statins tab at the end of this blog entry to see those entries.

The safest, most reliable, way to reduce your risk of heart disease is to reduce your intake of salt and salty food. This will also reduce excess weight, lower high blood pressure/hypertension and lower high cholesterol levels and improve health in a multitude of other ways too. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html

and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free...(o:

GPs could save £85m by more systematic prescribing of lower cost, generic forms of more-expensive brand-name drugs according to National Audit Office.

GPs waste £85m a year by prescribing expensive drugs - Independent

Extract:

"GPs could save £85m by more systematic prescribing of lower cost, generic forms of more-expensive brand-name drugs, according to the report by the National Audit Office (NAO).

However, more savings could be made by reducing the number of drugs prescribed each time by the GPs and by keeping abreast of the cheaper drugs available to treat the same conditions, said the report.

"We found that drugs wastage is a significant cost for the NHS: at least £100m a year, and perhaps considerably more than this," the report added.

The findings could see Gordon Brown order a renewed drive to reduce the NHS drugs bill, which is up to £22m a day for prescriptions in primary care alone, excluding hospitals. The NAO said the Department of Health should carry out a survey of residual drugs including those left in medicine cabinets for a more accurate estimate of the scale of medicines wastage.

One of the problems in tackling the waste on drugs, highlighted in the report, was the influence of the drug companies on GPs through their use of marketing. They are investing £850m a year on pushing products to doctors. GPs, surveyed by the NAO, said it was difficult to assimilate all the information they received on prescribing, and many were influenced by what the drug companies told them."


Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Patients experience very little benefit despite huge increases in cash for the NHS.

Patients miss out as NHS cash floods in

Extract:

"Billions of pounds of taxpayers' money pumped into the National Health Service has gone on improving the salaries of GPs and consultants and paying for increased pensions rather than on improvements in patient care and frontline services.

A damning report by the highly respected health think-tank, the King's Fund, reveals that productivity in the health service has actually declined, despite the huge injection of cash.

The report reveals that only 30 pence in every pound of the Government's record NHS budget has been aimed at directly improving patient care. As well as salaries, the rest has gone on a growing bill for clinical negligence payouts and rising drug costs."

Patients seem to come last in importance for the NHS. Doctors' pay and drug company profits seem to be the priorities.