News
The Society of General Internal Medicine has released a new list of recommendations, "Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question."
The list is part of the ABIM Foundation’s Choosing Wisely campaign to educate patients and physicians about unnecessary and potentially harmful testing and treatment.
SGIM’s recommendations are:
• Don’t recommend daily home finger glucose testing in patients with type 2 diabetes who are not using insulin. Although the self-monitoring of blood glucose is important for maintaining glucose control in patients with type 1 diabetes, there is no benefit in patients with type 2 diabetes who are not on insulin or hypoglycemia medications.
• Don’t perform routine general health checks for asymptomatic adults. As opposed to office visits for acute illness or chronic care management, regularly scheduled general health checks without a specific cause have not been shown to be effective in reducing morbidity, mortality, or hospitalization.
• Don’t perform routine preoperative testing before low-risk surgical procedures. Preoperative assessment is expected before surgical procedures, but results in unnecessary delays and avoidable costs for low-risk surgical procedures.
• Don’t recommend cancer screening in adults with a life expectancy of less than 10 years. Though cancer screening can be lifesaving in healthy at-risk patients, patients with life expectancies of less than 10 years are unlikely to reap the long-term benefits from screening, and are more susceptible to the harmful complications of testing.
• Don’t place, or leave in place, peripherally inserted central catheters (PICC) for patient or provider convenience. PICCs are common devices that are associated with complications such as central line–associated bloodstream infection and venous thromboembolism. Placement of PICCs should be limited, and the catheters should be removed without delay when they no longer serve a purpose.