{"id":869,"date":"2007-09-06T11:28:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-06T15:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=869"},"modified":"2007-09-06T11:28:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-06T15:28:00","slug":"nejm-efficacy-and-safety-of-epoetin-alfa-in-critically-ill-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=869","title":{"rendered":"NEJM &#8212; Efficacy and Safety of Epoetin Alfa in Critically Ill Patients"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/content.nejm.org\/cgi\/content\/full\/357\/10\/965\">NEJM &#8212; Efficacy and Safety of Epoetin Alfa in Critically Ill Patients<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Results: As compared with the use of placebo, epoetin alfa therapy<sup> <\/sup>did not result in a decrease in either the number of patients<sup> <\/sup>who received a red-cell transfusion or the mean number of red-cell<sup> <\/sup>units transfused.<\/p>\n<p>Conclusions: The use of epoetin alfa does not reduce the incidence<sup> <\/sup>of red-cell transfusion among critically ill patients, but it<sup> <\/sup>may reduce mortality in patients with trauma. Treatment with<sup> <\/sup>epoetin alfa is associated with an increase in the incidence<sup> <\/sup>of thrombotic events<br \/><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em><\/em><br \/><em>Then, in the discussion:<\/em><br \/><em><\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>In contrast, [to trauma patients] no significant reduction<sup> <\/sup>in mortality was seen among surgical and medical patients receiving<sup> <\/sup>epoetin alfa.<br \/><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>and<\/em><br \/><em><\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>The use of epoetin alfa is not supported for patients admitted<sup> <\/sup>to the ICU with a nontraumatic surgical or medical diagnosis,<sup> <\/sup>unless they have an approved indication for epoetin alfa.<sup> <\/sup><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><sup><em><\/em><\/sup><br \/><sup><em>The only reason I post this is because of the extraordinary amount of money I saw spent on promoting the use of this very expensive drug in the critically ill patient population over the past five or ten years. And, mea culpa, I fell for it, too. It will now, hopefully, dry up as yet another revenue source for these companies as word (slowly) filters out to the critical care community. I&#8217;m betting there won&#8217;t be a full court press to get the word out about this particular article.<\/em><\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEJM &#8212; Efficacy and Safety of Epoetin Alfa in Critically Ill Patients Results: As compared with the use of placebo, epoetin alfa therapy did not result in a decrease in &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=869\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;NEJM &#8212; Efficacy and Safety of Epoetin Alfa in Critically Ill Patients&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pharmaceutical-industry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}