Consumer Impact on Pharmaceuticals Flashcards
What are the pros of having commericials for new drugs?
That the ads inform patients about diseases and possible treatments
Encourage people to seek medical advice
Help remove stigma associated with medical conditions
Provide needed sales revenue to fund costly research and development (R&D) of new drugs
What are the cons of having commercials for drugs?
Ads misinform patients
Promote drugs before long-term safety-profiles can be known
Medicalize and stigmatize normal conditions and bodily functions like wrinkles and low testosterone
Waste valuable medical appointment time, and have led to our society’s overuse of prescription drugs
Can drug advertising induce a placebo effect that might increase the clinical effectiveness of the advertised products?
As many as 1/3 of patients report relief from postoperative pain, cough, headache, depression, and other conditions when given a placebo
Has advertising lead to overprescribing?
probably!
antibiotics for upper respiratory infections
antihistamines, benzos, sedative-hypnotics in the elderly
inhalers for asthma like conditions
sildenafil for normal sexual function
Doinformed, motivated, and involved patients dramatically improve the quality of their own care?
Think about the study with patients asking for a brand-specific medications vs. no specific request.
Pts who requested specific drug received “higher quality” care
DTCA can be an extremely effective way of encouraging patients with a recent (blank) to take aspirin, or an HMG-CoA-reductase inhibitor (statin).
MI
When is drug advertising most likely to deliver public health benefits?
when the condition to be treated is serious and when the treatment is safe, effective, and underused.
When is drug advertising likely to deliver net harms?
when the treatment is potentially dangerous, marginally effective, or overused.
Which disease has had the greatest growth in pharmaceutical efforts and research?
AIDS
**lots of money spent on AIDS!
