Rates of referral to a cardiologist, which markedly improves cardiovascular outcomes, differ significantly based on nonclinical patient characteristics.
Amidst discussions of how to maximize physician contributions in high-risk disaster situations, the author asks if doctors are actually duty-bound to contribute at all.
A bioethicist argues that two journal articles about quality of life-adjusted years research oversimplifies the issue and do not take into consideration people's abilities to adapt to disability and disease.
A health economics professor believes more research is needed on quality of life-adjusted years to explore the way we describe health states, the elicitation of patient values, and how to develop methods for obtaining informed general population preferences.
Elly A. Stolk, MSc and Floortje E. van Nooten, MSc
Two medical technology researchers argue that patients' own valuations of their health states may result in devaluation of interventions that can help them.
Medical ethicists have discussed the use of race classification in determining disease prevalence and the response of specific ethnic groups to different medications.