Posted by Marilyn Lawrence on April 12, 1998 at 13:25:51:
1. Ther have been so many advances that it's hard to know what to pick, so I'll stick to my own field, cardiac cath lab. In the past 15 years I have seen advances that I would never thought possible. When I first started, if someone had a heart attack, you didn't cath them for about 3 months, thats how tough on the system it was. Now we bring the heart attack patient to the lab while the heart attacks in progress to use balloon angioplasty and stents to stop the heart attack in progress and save as much heart muscle as possible. Also a big advancement is the development of "clot busting" drugs that the patient can get IV to break up the clot before we even get inside. And that's just one minute thing I've seen through the years.
2. Its easy to say the FDA should place restrictions on equivalent things to avoid duplication, but I don't think there would be all of the things available now that really work if the FDA did that. Yes, there seems to be a lot of duplication, but if each new thing that comes out is just a little better and offers a little bit more for the patient, then I think its worth it.
3. If I could financiallly afford it without risking everything I have, then I would be in favor of paying more for the latest technology closeby. However, if I could not afford it, or was on some kind of insurance program that wouldn't pay more for the services, then I feel I would travel farther and pay less.