Friday, July 17, 2009

President Obama quotes DCRI JAMA paper

During his recent speech at the annual American Medical Association (AMA) meeting, President Obama quoted a paper written by the DCRI's Pierluigi Tricoci, MD, MHS, PhD.

The paper, “Scientific Evidence Underlying the ACC/AHA Clinical Practice Guidelines,” appeared in the February 25 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Tricoci was the lead author, and Judith Kramer, MD, and Rob Califf, MD, were also contributors.

Obama was discussing health care reform at the AMA meeting.

The comments from the paper that Obama referenced are below:

“Too many doctors and patients are making decisions without the benefit of the latest research. A recent study, for example, found that only half of all cardiac guidelines are based on scientific evidence. Half. That means doctors may be doing a bypass operation when placing a stent is equally effective, or placing a stent when adjusting a patient's drugs and medical management is equally effective – driving up costs without improving a patient's health,” Obama said in his speech.

Dr. Tricoci, when commenting on the speech, said, “I was honored that the President referenced and commented on our work during his speech on Health Care Reform at the AMA meeting, highlighting the importance of research to improve the healthcare system. When we wrote our paper, one of our goals was to enhance awareness on the need to improve funding for clinical research and on the research system itself. I'm certainly pleased that our message reached up to the top of the US government and was endorsed by President Obama.”

Click here to watch Obama's speech.