No lack of physician treatment guidelines

Doctors looking for advice on treating patients can go to such sites as those offered by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Guideline Clearinghouse.

May 5, 2008

Guidelines are out there
Doctors looking for guidance in treating their patients don't have to look far.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine offers advice on the treatment of snoring; the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons describes how to identify and treat osteoporosis. There are so many guidelines, in fact, that the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality maintains a database -- the National Guideline Clearinghouse includes more than 2,150 guideline summaries.

In some cases, the guidelines are general; in others, they're very specific. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that primary-care physicians screen patients for alcohol misuse, but leaves it up to them to determine the best way to go about it. Guidelines developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, on the other hand, explain precisely what to do if a child is diagnosed with an ear infection right down to the types of antibiotics and dosages that should be prescribed.

The art of doctoring is tailoring these guidelines to individual patients. Just because a recommendation is appropriate for most people doesn't mean that there aren't exceptions. Good medicine requires that physicians know when more is really necessary and when it's simply overtreating.

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Valerie Ulene