BMJ  2007;334 (7 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39175.409132.3A

Editor's Choice

US editor's choice

Curbing medical enthusiasm

Boston

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

It's easy to feel contempt for deluded practitioners of the past who advocated bloodletting and tonsillectomies for all. Easy, that is, until one considers emerging evidence that coronary stenting and postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy may well be the contemporary equivalents of those now discredited practices. These and other cautionary tales abound in this week's BMJ, reminding us of the dangers of medical enthusiasm for interventions and treatments—however well intentioned—that have not been subjected to careful scrutiny.

A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that patients with stable coronary artery disease do just as well with medical therapy as they do with percutaneous revascularization procedures. Susan Mayor interviews (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39174.633403.DB) a British physician who wrote an editorial in the BMJ last month (2007;334:593-594, doi: 10.1136/bmj.39154.552280.BE) commenting on a group of BMJ papers that also cast doubt on stenting (2007;334:617, 621, 624; doi: 10.1136/bmj.39106.476215.BE, . . . [Full text of this article]

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