Sunday 21 May 2017

SLAP in the face for shoulder surgery

I have always been sceptical of some shoulder procedures, and the increasing rate of shoulder surgery and the lack of high quality evidence worries me. I started a simple blog post about one particular operation (for “SLAP” lesions) and found a tale of research waste, bad science, overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

Wednesday 17 May 2017

Steroid injections in the knee

Corticosteroid injections in the knee are VERY commonly performed for any knee pain, but particularly for osteoarthritis. They don’t provide significant benefit to people, and they cause harm.

Monday 8 May 2017

Overcoming cognitive biases

A recent paper in the Medical Journal of Australia (here) provides a nice overview of the biases that lead doctors to overtreat and overinvestigate, but also offers useful solutions that we need to act on.