Annals Internal Medicine, Author Interviews, Gender Differences, UCLA / 25.04.2024
UCLA Study Finds Patients Treated By Female Physicians Have Better Outcomes and Fewer Readmissions
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
[caption id="attachment_61597" align="alignleft" width="150"]
Dr. Tsugawa[/caption]
Yusuke Tsugawa, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine & Health Policy and Management, UCLA
Director of Data Core, UCLA Department of Medicine Statistics Core
Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90024
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Prior studies have found that female and male physicians practice medicine differently. For example, female physicians are, on average, more likely to abide by clinical guidelines and spend more time listening to patients. However, evidence was limited as to whether such differences have clinically meaningful impact on patients’ health outcomes, which was the aim of this study.
Dr. Tsugawa[/caption]
Yusuke Tsugawa, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine & Health Policy and Management, UCLA
Director of Data Core, UCLA Department of Medicine Statistics Core
Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90024
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Prior studies have found that female and male physicians practice medicine differently. For example, female physicians are, on average, more likely to abide by clinical guidelines and spend more time listening to patients. However, evidence was limited as to whether such differences have clinically meaningful impact on patients’ health outcomes, which was the aim of this study.
Julia Cave Arbanas[/caption]
Julia Cave Arbanas
Project Manager and
Dr. Childers[/caption]
Chris Childers, MD, PhD
Division of General Surgery
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Patients with end-stage renal disease – poorly functioning kidneys – often have to receive dialysis. This typically requires a patient to visit an outpatient clinic several times a week to have their blood filtered by a machine. Over the past few years, two for-profit companies have increased their control over the outpatient dialysis market – DaVita and Fresenius. Combined they control approximately ¾ of the market. A number of concerns have been raised against these for-profit companies suggesting that the quality of care they deliver may be worse than the care delivered at not-for-profit companies. But, because they control so much of the market and because patients have to receive dialysis so frequently, patients may not have much choice in the clinic they visit.
Medicare covers patients who are 65 years or older and also patients on dialysis regardless of age. Medicare pays a fixed rate for dialysis which they believe is adequate to cover the clinics' costs. However, if a patient also has private insurance, the insurer is required to pay for dialysis instead of Medicare. Whereas Medicare rates are fixed by the federal government, private insurers have to negotiate the price they pay, and may pay much more as a result.
Dr. Kishan[/caption]
Amar U. Kishan, MD
Assistant Professor
Department of Radiation Oncology
University of California, Los Angeles
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Typical external beam radiation courses range up to 8-9 weeks in length (39-45 treatments). There are data that shorter courses, delivering a higher dose per day, may be just as effective.
Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) really pushes this concept by condensing the treatment to just four to five treatments, with a high dose per day.
Here, we present the pooled results of the outcomes of 2142 men with low and intermediate risk prostate cancer and a median of 6.9 years of followup.
We demonstrate a very favorable efficacy and safety profile. Specifically, the rates of recurrences were 4.5% and 10.2% for low and intermediate risk disease at 7 years, and rates of late severe toxicity were 2.4% for urinary toxicity and 0.4% for gastrointestinal toxicity.
