Womens Health Care

palaminoridesagain

What in the world is going on in our country?  First the issues with the mammograms and now the issues with women getting pap smears.  Is anyone else upset about all of this?  It is getting scary - that we as women are losing out on lots of preventative care that will prevent problems in the future. 

nnn 

iodine

There is a whole new forum--it's at the top of the list of forums, ck it out--oh, and wear asbestos gloves, it gets hot in some places.

konquer

I am getting a tee shirt made that will say, "I followed the USPSTF guidelines!"   that I can wear when I go without my foobs.

Prevention and early detection is less expensive than treatment of advanced cancers.

It is appalling that the medical bean counters have the attitude that a few thousand womens lives per year are expendable.  The cost to women, their families and loved ones is incalculable. 

It is also interesting that these new guide lines apply to WOMEN. Maybe attitudes toward us have not changed as much as we like to think.

otter

The USPSTF isn't specifically picking on us.  They're assigned to review all sorts of preventive healthcare issues and come up with guidelines.  This is how they're identified on the USPSTF website:  "An independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention that systematically reviews the evidence of effectiveness and develops recommendations for clinical preventive services."  Here's a page that lists the topics they've reviewed, just in the area of preventive healthcare for adults:  http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/cps3dix.htm

There is a whole separate section of documents containing their recommendations for preventive services for children and adolescents.

These are some of the other topics the USPSTF is reviewing, as of November 2009: 

Aspiring Use to Prevent Preeclampsia

Cervical Cancer Screening

Depression in Adults

Falls in Older Adults

Hearing Impairment, Older Adults

Oral Cancer Screening

Osteoporosis Screening

Osteoporosis Preventive Medicine

Ovarian Cancer

Skin Cancer Counseling

Vitamin Supplements to Prevent Cancer and CHD

The members of the USPSTF are not all qualified to study all of those things in detail.  So, they "hire" (commission) other healthcare researchers who are experts in a particular subject, to conduct a detailed review of all the high-quality clinical trials that have been done on the subject and write a review.  The USPSTF then uses the information in the review article (sometimes there are multiple articles) to come up with their recommendations.  There might also be other input into their decision-making; I don't know.

In any case, the USPSTF isn't new and they aren't specifically focusing on women's healthcare issues.  (And the new forum would be a better place for this thread.)

otter