Changing Treatments

Medicine is always changing. New treatments become available. Old ones become obsolete. But how does a treatment become established? How long does it take for science to get from research bench to bedside? And how do patients decide what is best for them? On this episode, we take a look at how patients and health care providers navigate the constantly changing world of medical treatments.

We hear stories about how Accelerated Resolution Therapy [ART] became a hot new trauma therapy; one family’s wrenching decision over scoliosis surgery; and health care journalist Kate Pickert’s personal journey through modern breast cancer treatments.

Also heard on this week’s episode:

• Health care journalist Kate Pickert wrote several stories about breast cancer over the years — but when she was diagnosed herself, she realized that a lot of what she thought about treatment was wrong. Pickert wrote “Radical: The Science, Culture, and History of Breast Cancer in America.”
• Physician Jeff Brenner set out to revolutionize how health care is delivered to some of the country’s sickest patients. His goal: to give patients who were using the ER for health care easy access to primary care. But was his approach successful? We chat with Dan Gorenstein, host of the health care podcast “Tradeoffs.”