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2007: the therapeutic year in review

Prescrire's annual drug review is the opportunity for caregivers to update their latest treatment options, based on impartial information.

To ensure quality care, caregivers need to update their knowledge regularly using independent, pertinent information. This is precisely what Prescrire's annual drug review provides.

Commercial innovation is not necessarily synonymous with therapeutic benefit. It is better to keep to treatments and medicines with the most favourable benefit-harm balance, for example: a balanced diet and physical exercise to fight obesity; vaccination against some types of papillomavirus plus prevention and screening for cervical cancer; simple foot care to help the elderly stay mobile; educating patients and caregivers on the dangers associated with environmental pollution; sucking ice cubes to prevent oral mucositis associated with cancer treatments; etc. Certain well-established drugs should be discontinued because of their clearly negative benefit-harm balance: buflomedil, marketed for various vascular disorders despite serious neurological and cardiovascular adverse effects; glitazones, marketed as a treatment for diabetes, whose catalogue of adverse effects is increasingly worrying; and so on.

This 30-page report summarises the therapeutic breakthroughs of the past year, points out which drugs should be avoided, and provides useful explanations that can be shared with patients.

©Prescrire 1 January 2008

Source: "Enrichir sa panoplie thérapeutique" Rev Prescrire 2008; 28 (291): 28-60.

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