Surgery no better than placebo - doctors are superfluous

haidut

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A great article that should give a serious food for thought even to the most ardent defenders of allopathic medicine. Despite the findings of the (in)famous Dr. Ioannidis that 80%+ percent of most clinical trials for drugs are bunk, one of the unassailable bastions of medicine has always been surgery. I mean, how many people would dare question an agitated doctor who recommends a physically invasive procedure as the only path to health/life? The very nature of surgery conditions most recipients (and its performers) that it must work as it structurally changes the organism in a very physical/direct manner. Sure, it does bring about a change, but is it for the better? Well, the article below claims that in all the surgery clinical trials ever performed in a true randomized, placebo-controlled fashion more than half of them found the surgical procedure to be no batter than placebo. Even more worryingly, ALL recent (in the last decade) such trials, performed according to the most robust and modern trial design methods found surgical procedures to be no better than placebos. A scary thought of not just how much money is being wasted on simply keeping doctors employed, but also on how much trauma (and even death) those procedures generate for their recipients. Speaking of keeping doctors employed, apparently even sick and physically mangled prisoners of war usually recover fully without ANY medical treatment. So, in the words of the article itself, doctors were (are?) superfluous!

"...He tells the story of Archie Cochrane, for whom the Cochrane Collaboration of systematic analyses was named. As the only doctor in a POW camp in World War II, he was responsible for 10,000 prisoners, many suffering from open wounds, dysentery, typhoid, and other serious diseases. His requests for doctors and medicines were denied by his German captors, who said doctors were superfluous. In six months, only 4 prisoners died, each of them shot while trying to escape. The rest all got better, without treatment."

"...Harris covers the many factors that affect a patient’s response to a placebo. A systematic review found that placebo was just as effective as surgery in over half of the cases studied, and all of the recent trials comparing surgery to placebo have found that surgery was no better than placebo. He demolishes all the arguments surgeons give for continuing to do these operations that have been tested and shown not to work. The real reason is that they continue to believe the procedure is effective, just as the dowsers continued to believe they could find water with a forked stick. Tradition and personal experience triumph over science and reason. Science is just a systematic way to reduce error. Imperfect, but better than any other way. Blinded trials are the least biased way to determine effectiveness."

"...He concludes by saying we should treat new surgical procedures like new drugs, and only pay for those that are part of a trial to find out if they work. Most surgical procedures being done today have not been subjected to blinded trials. Advice to patients: it’s OK to ask for a second opinion, and you should always ask your surgeon for the evidence showing the benefits and risks of the procedure, and what you can expect to happen if surgery is not done."
 

PxD

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I have some personal experience with this issue re: back pain and spinal fusion surgery. I didn't go the surgery route and went for corrective treatment with traction via a chiro instead, and fixed my issue without any side effects. The surgery route comes with a pretty high chance of some horrendous complications, nevermind the cost and invasive nature of the surgery itself, and it leads to further loss of spinal mobility down the line which will then presumably require more surgery to keep fusing the bones together. I have a friend who had 2 vertebrae fused at age 40 - he wanted a quick "solution", not 6-9 months of corrective training for the spine - and ended up with dropfoot in one foot, a semi-lame leg for months, and persistent residual nerve pain in his back and legs. This is the cutting edge state of the art for this type of surgery.

Carpal tunnel surgery is another snake-oil treatment that I know of. I think the majority of them don't lead to permanent resolution of the issue.
 

Kram

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I don't have access to the full study but you may appreciate this @haidut


Most healthcare interventions tested in Cochrane Reviews are not effective according to high quality evidence: a systematic review and meta-analysis​

Highlights​

  • In this large sample of 1,567 interventions studied within Cochrane reviews, effects of most interventions (94%) interventions were not supported by high-quality evidence.
  • Potential harms of healthcare interventions were measured more rarely than benefits.
  • Patients, doctors, and policy makers should consider the lack of high-quality evidence supporting the benefits and harms of many interventions in their decision-making.

Abstract​

Objective​

To estimate the proportion of healthcare interventions tested within Cochrane Reviews that are effective according to high-quality evidence.

Methods​

We selected a random sample of 2,428 (35%) of all Cochrane Reviews published between 1 January 2008 and 5 March 2021. We extracted data about interventions within these reviews that were compared with placebo, or no treatment, and whose outcome quality was rated using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system. We calculated the proportion of interventions whose benefits were based on high-quality evidence (defined as having high quality GRADE rating for at least one primary outcome, statistically significant positive results, and being judged by review authors as effective. We also calculated the proportion of interventions that suggested harm.

Results​

Of 1,567 eligible interventions, 87 (5.6%) had high-quality evidence supporting their benefits. Harms were measured for 577 (36.8%) interventions. There was statistically significant evidence for harm in 127 (8.1%) of these. Our dependence on the reliability of Cochrane author assessments (including their GRADE assessments) was the main potential limitation of our study.

Conclusion​

More than 9 in 10 healthcare interventions studied within recent Cochrane Reviews are not supported by high-quality evidence, and harms are under-reported.
 
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Michael Mohn

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There are certainly situations where surgery is very beneficial, necessary or life-saving.
CPR (cardio pulmonairy resuscitation) was discovered in animal tests and promoted around 1870 but was ignored untill 1950 because surgeons insisted that the chest had to be cut open and the heart had to be massaged by the surgeon. Death rate of this procedure was over 90%. You must be stupid or criminal to ignore your failure for 80 years.
To this day doctors wash their hands with a desinfectant only for 1 in 10 patients (nurse study), 170 years after the discovery of the benefits of hand washing by doctor Semmelweis.

P. S. Not contradicting you @GreekDemiGod but the really necessary amount of surgery is probably way less than most people think. Surgery beyond the ER is probably always fraud.
 
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tankasnowgod

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A great article that should give a serious food for thought even to the most ardent defenders of allopathic medicine. Despite the findings of the (in)famous Dr. Ioannidis that 80%+ percent of most clinical trials for drugs are bunk, one of the unassailable bastions of medicine has always been surgery. I mean, how many people would dare question an agitated doctor who recommends a physically invasive procedure as the only path to health/life? The very nature of surgery conditions most recipients (and its performers) that it must work as it structurally changes the organism in a very physical/direct manner. Sure, it does bring about a change, but is it for the better?
One of the few people I ever saw bring this up in the past was Anthony Colpo. In "The Great Cholesterol Con," Colpo cited several RCTs that compared bypass surgery to a "medical" intervention (drugs like nitrates and Beta Blockers), and found that there was basically no difference in survival rates, either in the short or long term, with the exception of some people passing away shortly after surgery due to complications (1.4-5%).





If anyone has a copy, these studies (and more) are discussed in Appendix C.
 

Giraffe

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"...Harris covers the many factors that affect a patient’s response to a placebo. A systematic review found that placebo was just as effective as surgery in over half of the cases studied, and all of the recent trials comparing surgery to placebo have found that surgery was no better than placebo. He demolishes all the arguments surgeons give for continuing to do these operations that have been tested and shown not to work. The real reason is that they continue to believe the procedure is effective, just as the dowsers continued to believe they could find water with a forked stick. Tradition and personal experience triumph over science and reason. Science is just a systematic way to reduce error. Imperfect, but better than any other way. Blinded trials are the least biased way to determine effectiveness."

There is a German radiologist - Dr Gerd Reuter - who is very critical of the medical system. He says as radiologist you get to see a lot of the harm physicians do to their patients. He thinks that in most cases the body heals itself and you get better after a while. Neither treatment nor placebo do have anything to do with it. Time heals all wounds.
 
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haidut

haidut

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Time heals all wounds.

Amen to that!
Btw, now that we know that time is just energy flow (i.e. as per Kozyrev's and Peat's writings), it makes even more sense that time heals all wounds, doesn't it? Maybe that's all there is to curing disease - give the organism a break so that it can once again imbibe the ever-present energy/time around us and thus heal itself.
 

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