Thanks. My actual name is Nancy Sculerati. If you are one of the people who uses pub med - you can find my publications. You may have to fiddle with the settings because it been almost 10 years since I published anything.
I was an Ear Nose and Throat surgeon. In Academic medicine in Manhattan. Many of my publications and research had to do with gathering actual data on standard teachings.
Very often, what is in text book is what a MD professor believes is true and had read is true. The more it is said, and the more places it appears in "print" (ink or electrons) the more it is believed.
Most every textbook I have read states that good pain relief is obtained with NSAIDs for most SpA patients. The implication is narcotics are not usually required. I mean, if you have a GP who goes to the trouble of reading about your disease, this is what they are likely to find.
There is one research paper from Turkey where the clinicians had a group of about 70 (as I remember) AnkSpA patients. They asked themselves - how true is that? And then asked the patients, followed them prospectively for 3 months.
NSAIDs were NOT effective in more than half of the patients.
I'll go back and dig up that paper and post it. Believe me, getting data is hard work, it may sound easy, but the records have to be great, no matter what else is going on the research question has to be addressed every visit or that subject can't really be included in the results.
Last edited by Bleecker; 04/02/10 08:54 PM.
