Balancing benefits and harms

Balancing benefits and harms in health care.

Editor—The theme issue on balancing benefits and harms in health care highlighted the need to create better systems to detect and share information about adverse events associated with newly licensed drugs or drugs used off licence or for indications not supported by evidence from clinical trials. 2 3 A new project, CICERO (www.pacehealthsystems.com/ cicero.html), proposes to create a global on...

FORUM Screening : Balancing the Benefits and Harms

idea of screening is seductive—isn't it always better to find things early, rather than late? Screening, defined as testing for a condition when the person has no recognized signs or symptoms of that condition, is widespread and popular. Patients often want screening tests done and clinicians, for a variety of reasons, want to provide them. The purpose of screening , however, is not only to det...

Dietary supplements and cancer prevention: balancing potential benefits against proven harms.

Nutritional supplementation is now a multibillion-dollar industry, and about half of all US adults take supplements. Supplement use is fueled in part by the belief that nutritional supplements can ward off chronic disease, including cancer, although several expert committees and organizations have concluded that there is little to no scientific evidence that supplements reduce cancer risk. To t...

Re: Dietary supplements and cancer prevention: balancing potential benefits against proven harms.

Martínez et al. (1) recommended against vitamin D supplements for reducing the risk of cancer. However, the evidence that vitamin D reduces the risk of cancer is very strong despite reports to the contrary. There are several types of evidence: ecological, case–control, cohort, and randomized controlled trials. Each approach has its strengths and limitations. The strengths of the ecological appr...

Balancing benefits and harms: the example of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.