Transvaginal mesh (mesh) surgery was developed through collaborations between surgeons and device manufacturers, in 1996, for the treatment of stress urinary incontinence (incontinence) and/or pelvic organ prolapse (prolapse) in women. It was aggressively promoted to practitioners and rapidly adopted in practice. Clinical trials indicated mesh [...]
Anticholinergic burden has been associated with adverse outcomes such as falls. To date, no gold standard measure has been identified to assess anticholinergic burden, and no conclusion has been drawn on which of the different measure algorithms best predicts falls in older patients from general [...]
Harms in clinical trials may be characterised by adverse events (AEs) and adverse reactions. Both terms refer to untoward medical occurrences in a trial participant, but the second term presumes causation and is reserved for events directly attributed to the investigational treatment. Harms reporting in [...]
This study found a large number of biological age calculators available online, which varied widely in terms of their risk factors, underlying algorithms and results. How would the average consumer make sense of these tools? For most calculators, it is very unclear whether the underlying [...]
The interpretation of the risk ratio as an effect measure in a clinical trial is naïve and better replaced by its interpretation as a likelihood ratio. The ratio of the complementary risk ratio's (or likelihood ratio's) is what should actually be interpreted as an effect [...]
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk communication is a challenge for clinical practice, where physicians find it difficult to explain the absolute risk of a CVD event to patients with varying health literacy. Converting the probability to heart age is increasingly used to promote lifestyle change, but [...]
Active patient involvement in medical decision making has become increasingly important. This can be particularly challenging for older people, who face many, often complex, health-related decisions. Clinical guidelines need to place emphasis on both benefits and harms, to enhance a careful consideration of treatment options [...]
A man walks up to a stranger with a loaded gun, points it at his head, and pulls the trigger. All of us can recognise that this is morally wrong, whether we pay attention to the consequences (the stranger dies), duties (we ought not kill [...]