Pharmaceutical Promotion can cause doctors to prescribe more expensively, less adequately and more often, according to a new study co-authored by York University professor Joel Lexchin.
The findings, published today in the journal PLoS medicine, offer a broad look at the relationship between the medical prescription habits and their exposure to information provided by the drug company.Researchers analyzed 58 separate studies of this phenomenon from Canada, United States, Europe and Australia, dating back to 1960.
"Many doctors claim that they are not affected by the information provided by pharmaceutical companies. our research clearly shows that are – and the negative influence," says Lexchin, Professor of a medical emergency in Toronto and the School of Health Policy & Management in the Faculty of health, York.
"Unfortunately, patients are getting a raw deal.If doctors are inundated with advertising by brand, companies are more likely to prescribe that brand, regardless if it's better for the patient, "says Lexchin.
In General, researchers have not found any evidence that promotional efforts of companies to improve drug prescribing behavior in any way. all but one of the studies suggested that exposure to promotional information were associated with a lower quality prescription; others not detected any binding. Results also show that has brought to prescribe more frequent;information promozionalistudi treat this correlation showed a peak in prescribing or not disclosed no association.Researchers also established a link between promotion and prescribing higher costs.
Lexchin says the Canadian drug companies spend big money on marketing their products to physicians, to the detriment of other priorities such as research and development.
"In Canada, firms are estimated to be spending anywhere between $ 2.4 and 4.75 billion dollars each year for promotion, one of the main reasons why spending for brand name drugs is increasing at a rate of just under 10 per cent per annum until two years ago," she says.
A limitation of research is that most studies were observational in nature, means that the majority of physicians who attended are selected randomly.
"Even if we did not find any evidence of improvements in prescription because of promotional information, which does not completely exclude the possibility that prescribes sometimes could be improved," says Lexchin. "As a precaution, it is recommended that physicians avoided exposure to information provided by pharmaceutical companies. "
---
On the Internet:
More News in this category
No comments:
Post a Comment