Listen to Kitteh, Kitteh is RIGHT. And kitteh has claws that vote!
Posted on 08/02/2009 1:54:18 AM PDT by Schnucki
The Government's drug rationing watchdog says "therapeutic" injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.
Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy.
Specialists fear tens of thousands of people, mainly the elderly and frail, will be left to suffer excruciating levels of pain or pay as much as £500 each for private treatment.
The NHS currently issues more than 60,000 treatments of steroid injections every year. NICE said in its guidance it wants to cut this to just 3,000 treatments a year, a move which would save the NHS £33 million.
But the British Pain Society, which represents specialists in the field, has written to NICE calling for the guidelines to be withdrawn after its members warned that they would lead to many patients having to undergo unnecessary and high-risk spinal surgery.
Dr Christopher Wells, a leading specialist in pain relief medicine and the founder of the NHS' first specialist pain clinic, said it was "entirely unacceptable" that conventional treatments used by thousands of patients would be stopped.
"I don't mind whether some people want to try acupuncture, or osteopathy. What concerns me is that to pay for these treatments, specialist clinics which offer vital services are going to be forced to close, leaving patients in significant pain, with nowhere to go,"
The NICE guidelines admit that evidence was limited for many back pain treatments, including those it recommended. Where scientific proof was lacking, advice was instead taken from its expert group. But specialists are furious that while the group included practitioners of alternative therapies, there was no one with expertise in conventional
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
“mainly the elderly and frail”
Not necessarily true.
My dad has an inherited lower back/spinal problem that I, my aunt and my sister also have.
For many, *many* years, starting around 40, dad relied on those shots several times a year to keep working to feed and care for his family.
I’m just now getting to where I’m going to need them and my sister, though she’s 11 years younger, but weighs much more than I do, will probably need them soon, too.
[it starts in the late 30s/early 40s but lighter weight seems to mean the difference between bad and REALLY bad pain]
None of us were/are elderly or “useless eaters” at the time of onset.
This Eugenicare bill MUST die.
Not knowing any better, since I was raised without cats in the house, I married a two cat owner.
After a trip to the vet..the wife and vet suggested I place a place in the cats mouth and force it down the cats throat with my thumb.
That was 30 years ago..I retain a 3 inch scar on my thumb. When I look at it..I grimace.
I will not state in this forum what happened to the cat.
I can say a trip to the vet would have been futile.
haha a pill
“British Pain Society” would be a cool name for a band.
Kinda like the “2 day stay” surgery for a stainless steel spinal support that had my dad in the hospital for -3 weeks- and nearly paralyzed him?
Yeah.
I’m really looking forward to *that*.
[moral of story: NEVER listen to your uber-liberal, pETA loving, vegan retired teacher sister who recommended her own HMO neuro-quack]
They “redid” the SS rod 2 *more* times before they finally got it half-assed right to where SCREWS weren’t stabbing his spinal cord.
The day after the first surgery, he told me he couldn’t feel his leg yet it was “shocking him” and “numb”.
I told him to tell the doctors they’d pinched *other* nerves but they wouldn’t listen and it took 2 more tries to figure out what a little nobody like me immediately saw clear as day.
He still hurts a lot but not as bad as before.
My aunt got lucky...she’s fine.
- William Pitt
The cat became dog meat, ehh?(LOL!)
I can’t get out of bed on my own without the ESI (Epidural Steroidal Injection) several times a year. I’m 53 and it’s the only thing that keeps me on my feet and working full-time.
Let’s not advocate animal cruelty here, please. I hate dogs but I do not write mean things about them. I was attacked and bitten by a dog when I was five and I still HATE DOGS. But I won’t be cruel to any animals or laugh at animal cruelty.
Rods in the spine... This is the same surgery that’s been recommended for me.
The spinal doctor told me that I’d probably still be in pain, but that it would just be different after the surgery. My pain-management dr said that everyone who gets this surgery ends up at his place.
Honestly, I’m just too chicken to do it. Yes, I’m in pain, but I know and understand this pain. I can work around it. I can live with it.
The democrat party and that psychopath doctor brother of Rahm Emmanuel have proposed PRECISELY THE SAME bureaucratic mechanism, down to the smallest detail, modeled after the misnamed British N.I.C.E. agency.
Except of course, that the Ruling Class Washington democrats will continue with 5 star Gold Standard personal health insurance, paid in full by the abused slave taxpayers.
“Rods” isn’t exactly what the thing that dad got was called.
It actually looked a lot like those squeeze hair clip things we wore in the 80s except that it’s straight instead of curved.
[”banana clips” or something like that]
My aunt got them and is *perfectly* fine and pain free.
Because the doctor botched the initial surgery so badly, dad was not so lucky.
We now have a neuro clinic in town with very good surgeons who do this all the time locally instead of how things were back when my dad had to go to down the city and have it done.
Have you tried a TENS unit?
I pray that you get some relief.
I know how miserable it is.
The baby boomer's are a huge voting block for democrats, but that block is on it's way out. They're getting old. They need a replacement block equal in size to remain in power.
Those who are eligible for Medicare (age 65) will have their health care denied, and end of life counseling will take it's place.
As soon as a person retires (age 65), their death will be expedited.
The democrats can then keep their 50 years worth of Social Security payments to pay for illegal immigrant health care.
The illegal immigrant health care will sure up the immigrant vote for the coming amnesty bill.
The immigrant vote will replace the baby boomer vote for the democrats. They don't need the boomers to stay alive anymore!
Hey, and here I thought our Fearless Leader (gag) said we could just take our pain pills....
My husband needs a cortizone shot every couple of years for his extreme lower back pain - from his early 30s to early 40s and quite a productive and tax-paying member of society.
I see an acupuncturist, expensive and painful/uncomfortable (initially) tho worth it. But I was able to select her — they’re not all so good, and I certainly wouldn’t trust a govt-appointed one, sorry.
"Fractured tibia, sergeant'? 'Fractured tibia, sergeant'? Ooh. Proper little mummy's boy, aren't we? Well, I'll tell you something, my fine friend, if you fracture a tibia here you keep quiet about it!"
One of my girls has scoliosis and had surgery at 17 to straighten the column with a pair of steel rods. Her condition was causing her no pain and I suggested she wait on surgery and see if the condition would really worsen as the doctor predicted. But the surgeon had her convinced she was going to turn into some kind of freak if she didn't have the surgery done right away.
Her recovery time in the hospital was only about a day longer than promised, but in the aftermath she is bothered by chronic pain, and she won't exercise and has become quite overweight.
I continue to believe she should have waited on surgery until it became (if ever) absolutely necessary.
>>I can say a trip to the vet would have been futile.
I seriously hope that you are joking! You stuck your thumb past a predator’s razor-sharp teeth and down it’s throat and then (I assume from your comment) killed it for biting you? How would you react to someone shoving something the size of your forearm down your throat?
The idiot vet who suggested such a thing needs a big sign that says, “I don’t work with cats”. Every other vet in the world that works with cats would tell you to pop the pill in the mouth, clamp the jaws shut, and rub the cat’s throat until the swallow reflex kicks in.
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