Financial conflicts of interest exist between industry and physicians, and these relationships have the power to influence physicians’ medical practice. Transparency about conflicts matters for ensuring adequate informed consent, controlling healthcare expenditure, and encouraging physicians’ reflection on professionalism. The US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the Open ...

Financial conflicts of interest exist between industry and physicians, and these relationships have the power to influence physicians' medical practice. Transparency about conflicts matters for ensuring adequate informed consent, controlling healthcare expenditure, and encouraging physicians' reflection on professionalism. The US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the Open ...

W ith government funding for bio-medical research stagnant or declining, scientists rely more than ever on industry support. Yet although that support is indispensible, it poses delicate challenges: Scientists and doctors are sometimes tempted to decide what's best for a sponsoring company rather than for patients. These conflicts of interest have sparked growing calls for transparency into ind...

INTRODUCTION Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of death and disability worldwide, and their prevalence in lower- and middle-income countries (LMIC) is on the rise. The burden of chronic health expenditure born by patient households in these countries may be very high, particularly where out-of-pocket payments for health care are common. One such country where out-of-pocket ...

BACKGROUND To evaluate the short-term reproducibility of diurnal intraocular pressure (IOP) and ocular perfusion pressure (OPP) measurements in normal volunteers, untreated normal-tension glaucoma (NTG) and primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) patients. METHODS Fifty-four healthy volunteers (control group), 67 NTG patients and 54 POAG patients were recruited. The IOPs of both eyes were measured...

BACKGROUND The U.S. Physician Payments Sunshine Act mandates the reporting of payments or items of value received by physicians from drug, medical device, and biological agent manufacturers. The impact of these payments on physician prescribing has not been examined at large scale. METHODS We linked public Medicare Part D prescribing data and Sunshine Act data for 2013. Physician payments wer...

BACKGROUND To analyze the relation and distribution of mean, systolic and diastolic ocular perfusion pressure (OPP) in telemedical homemonitoring of patients with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG). METHODS 70 patients with POAG measured intraocular pressure (IOP) and blood pressure at home for a period of 6 months with the Goldmann applanation self-tonometer Ocuton S and the blood pressure d...

Osteopathic principles and practice (OPP) are considered the core, distinguishing elements of the osteopathic medical profession. As such, the American Osteopathic Association introduced Osteopathic Postdoctoral Training Institutions (OPTIs) in 1995 to further incorporate OPP into osteopathic graduate medical education. The current study describes the evolution of the OPP teaching programs at t...

PURPOSE To determine the association between the ocular perfusion pressure (OPP; essentially the difference between the blood pressure and the intraocular pressure [IOP]) and incident open-angle glaucoma (OAG). METHODS A subset of 3882 participants of the population-based Rotterdam Study for whom data from ophthalmic examinations at baseline and follow-up and blood pressure measurements at ba...