A primary rule of medicine is to first do no harm. But research at Harvard shows that your doctor may be unintentionally endangering your life. The study shows that if you suffer cardiac arrest, a sudden heart stoppage usually caused by an electrical disruption of heart muscle function, and your cardiologist is away at a cardiology meeting, you may have a much better chance of surviving than if he were at your bedside. The study indicates that among people with serious heart disease who suffer an arrest and are treated at a teaching hospital, about 30 percent survive (for at least a month) when cardiologists are at the hospital. When the cardiologists are away at scientific meetings, 40 percent survive. “That’s a tremendous reduction in mortality, better than most of the medical interventions that exist to treat these conditions,” says researcher Anupam Jena, an assistant professor of health care policy at the Harvard Medical School. Jena notes that there is a great deal of uncertainty concerning the best ways to treat people with serious heart difficulties who suffer cardiac arrest: “This study may help illuminate some of those gray areas and suggest ways we can provide better care for those high-risk patients.” The researchers believe that the study demonstrates that cardiologists may be over-treating these cases of cardiac arrest. When they were away at meetings, patients received fewer intensive, invasive procedures. “We don’t have the full set of answers about what works best in these cases, but the evidence suggests that a less is more approach might be best for higher-risk patients with these conditions,” Jena says. Source
