Cautious Patient Foundation – Programs & Resources

Disease Information

Asthma

Studies show us that asthma patients in the United States are treated inadequately over 40 percent of the time.

That means that you may be continually running to the doctor or ER with a crisis instead of receiving the correct dosages of the incredible medications we now have to control asthma.

Cholesterol

The patient may be the one who makes the clearest decision about whether cholesterol medication is necessary or would be helpful.

Why? Here are the facts:

The “Third Report of the Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults (ATP III Final Report)” (the latest complete report), published in 2002, is 280 pages long.

The “Executive Summary” of that publication is 36 pages long.

When a doctor is making a decision about whether a patient would benefit from cholesterol treatment (to protect the patient’s heart from an attack and the brain from a stroke), the doctor also has to take into account the 13-page “ATP III Update 2004: Implications of Recent Clinical Trials for the ATP III Guidelines.” (He or she also has to consider those additional recommendations along with all of the 2002 recommendations).

Diabetes

The patient must make sure diabetes goals, tests and exams are followed closely.

Diabetes is a very complex and deadly disease (but one which can be well-controlled); however, if you forget to pay attention to all of the details, you will suffer unnecessary heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, foot/leg amputations, blindness or early death.

Heart Attack

You (the patient’s family) may need to be the ones to make sure your loved one is getting these lifesaving services.

Unfortunately, doctors are not always up-to-date on the latest and best procedures for treating your illness or saving your life. The public doesn’t realize that there is no centralized authority saying, “Hey doctors, look at this: here are the new, tested, reliable and best drugs/exams/tests for treating a patient [with this particular disease]!” It should be the case—it’s just not. We (as doctors) can know what is best if we really try to keep current on a certain illness—it’s just not easy to do it.

High Blood Pressure (HBP)

The patient may need to be the one who makes sure that the doctor is keeping his or her blood pressure under control.

A fact little-known to patients - studies since the 1970s have shown that many doctors do not treat high blood pressure patients sufficiently to get their blood pressure (BP) to goal. This was studied by looking at the charts of hypertension patients (high blood pressure patients) and seeing what their BP was when they went in to see the doctor, and then assessing what the doctor recommended and advised at the end of each visit.