Cool it everyone, cool it.
From: Dr. David Wiseman (david.wiseman@medispecialty.com)
Wed Jul 30 08:42:06 2003
Dear All
It seems that my requests to behave nicely on this board have gone
unheeded. As soon as I am technically able I will be removing all the
offending posts.
For fear of repetition:
1. DO NOT make accusations about anyone that you cannot support in a
court of law.
2. Even if you think you can make such accusations, this is not the
place to do it. If you have a gripe against someone - approach them
respectfully and directly. Do not use this board as a battle ground. If
you think you have a valid criticism about anyone, document it
carefully. Summarise the points you want to make (in one or two short
sentences) and then back it up with complete documentation. Do not use
inuendo. It does not stand up in a court of law. It will not stand up
here. Review your case and ask yourself if you are really being to
harsh on the person. Do you really have evidence to support your point?
Give them the benefit of the doubt.
3. DO NOT escalate tensions by responding on this message baord.
Contrary to popular beleif - I do not spend 24 hours a day checking my
email and message board postings. If you see something that looks odd -
please tell either myself or Tracy Joslin (tracy.joslin@adhesions.org)
by email and phone. I cannot guarnatee to remove posts immediately, but
we will try.
4. Avoid the temptation to conduct your war even in email. What you
say will end up on a message baord somewhere, no doubt out of context.
5. We ARE NOT AGAINST DR. Kruschinski. Please stop all allegations to
the contrary. My post of a few weeks ago was fully endorsed by him. He
has told me that some people misinterpreted that post. Again - HE FULLY
ENDORSED THAT POST. We totally resent any accusation that the IAS has
been behind any some smear camapaign. It is not true.
6. We encourage Dr. K (and any other doctor doing this kind of work)
to collect his data and to present them to the medical community. Both
Dr. K and I fully expect that given the severity of the ARD disease,
there will be patients in whom pain or other symptoms will recur after
his, or anyone else's surgery.
7. A message board is not the place to conduct serious medical
research. A patient's perception about their problems is easily
influenced by their expectations and their impressions. By continuing
to post glowing reviews about Dr. K, or anyone use YOU ARE HARMING HIS
CREDIBILITY.
Let me spell this out. By inflating someone's expectations about their
surgery with any doctor, you are going to make them more dissapointed if
even the slightest thing goes wrong. Similarly, any posting of a
problem may prompt a patient to believe that their minor problem may be
similar. Consequently talk of "complications" can be blown out of
proportion. Nonetheless - he has a section in his message board where
he invites people to discuss their problems after surgery.
The section is called:
"Continuing pain after surgery
Here you are welcome to discuss your problems after having surgery ... "
I do not think this is a terribly good idea to have such a section, but
if you are compelled to discuss problems that is the place to do it.
I have discussed this frequently with Dr. K and have stressed that we
want him to collect sound and credible data. Please help him to do this
by respecting the rules of this board.
8. Dr. K has shared with us (as well as posted on his own board)some
preliminary results of his data. I STRESS preliminary becuase they are
legitimately open to some interpretation IN EITHER DIRECTION.
It seems that there have been some 33 US patients that have seen Dr. K
in the last 11 months or so. Some of them must be excluded from the
analysis for good reasons (eg patients have gallbladder or appendix
operations etc) , leaving 27 patients for analysis. Of these 6 of them
have reported some recurrence of pain or adhesions, which is 21%. THIS
IS A VERY GOOD RESULT, but nonetheless a preliminary one. We will be
happy to revise this estimate when there is full documentation from Dr.
K.
This compares very well with another study (that we will report to you
shortly) in which a US doctor performed similar procedures (using
Seprafilm and conventional laparoscopy) in 19 apparently similar
patients with a 24% rate of return of symptoms.The follow up there was
1-32 months.
The jury is not yet in however becuase we need to see longer follow up
for both studies, as well as data from Dr. K's European patients. We
encourage him to collect these data. Please help him maintain its
credibility by refraining from comment in either direction.
9. Please note that both Beverly Doucette and Dawn Rose have resigned
from the IAS, at their request. As soon as we are we will remove their
names from the list of support contacts.
Please let's return to the business of supporting patients in need of
support.
Thank you
--
David Wiseman