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Avoiding disease mongering: A checklist for vascular physicians and researchers.
Journal article

Avoiding disease mongering: A checklist for vascular physicians and researchers.

  • Frappé P Department of General Practice, University of Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne, France; INSERM U 1059 Sainbiose DVH and INSERM CIC-EC 1408, University of Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne, France; Primary Care Unit, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. Electronic address: paul.frappe@univ-st-etienne.fr.
  • Haller DM Primary Care Unit, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
  • Roméas A Department of General Practice, University of Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne, France.
  • Bertoletti L INSERM U 1059 Sainbiose DVH and INSERM CIC-EC 1408, University of Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne, France; Department of Vascular Medicine and Therapeutics, University Hospital of Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne, France.
  • François M Department of General Practice, University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin, Versailles, France; INSERM, Center for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health, Université Paris-Saclay, Université Paris-Sud, UVSQ, Villejuif, France.
  • Robert-Ebadi H Division of Angiology and Hemostasis, Geneva University Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland.
  • Righini M Division of Angiology and Hemostasis, Geneva University Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland.
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  • 2019-08-11
Published in:
  • Thrombosis research. - 2019
Awareness
Disease management
Medical ethics
Saphenous vein
Venous thromboembolism
Checklist
Disease Management
Humans
Physicians
Research Personnel
Vascular Diseases
English Disease mongering is an expression created in 1992 by a medical journalist, Lynn Payer, to qualify the "selling of sickness that widens the boundaries of treatable illness in order to expand markets for those who sell and deliver treatments". This interesting concept led us to question whether, as researchers with publication and career interests in superficial vein thrombosis, we were not shaping a benign condition into a disease. Since the publication of the CALISTO trial in 2010, anticoagulant management of superficial vein thrombosis remains debated. Issues raised, such as the cost-effectiveness of the treatment strategy, the use of a composite endpoint including death, the low event rate without mortality reduction and conflict of interest due to industrial funding. We searched Embase, Medline, Web of science, and Opengrey databases to review all aspects about disease mongering raised in the literature and created a checklist with seventeen items. We used this checklist as support for a narrative review, questioning known literature on superficial vein thrombosis. The main issues pointing towards disease mongering concerned definition and promotion; whereas management seemed rather spared. Many arguments could be counterbalanced, but researchers should pay particular attention to three major points: exaggeration of the severity of the disease and potential adverse outcomes without treatment, promotion by opinion leaders, and an openly declared, yet undoubtedly present, conflict of interest situation.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/46455
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