Does It Or Doesn’t It?

The Henry Ford Health System is an organization of six hospitals, nine emergency rooms, 40 general medical centers, and seven specialized medical facilities. It is a major provider of health care in the Detroit Metro area. The Detroit News reports on a study in the system that is sure to cause some controversy:

A Henry Ford Health System study shows the controversial anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helps lower the death rate of COVID-19 patients, the Detroit-based health system said Thursday.

Officials with the Michigan health system said the study found the drug “significantly” decreased the death rate of patients involved in the analysis.

The study analyzed 2,541 patients hospitalized among the system’s six hospitals between March 10 and May 2 and found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine died while 26% of those who did not receive the drug died.

Among all patients in the study, there was an overall in-hospital mortality rate of 18%, and many who died had underlying conditions that put them at greater risk, according to Henry Ford Health System. Globally, the mortality rate for hospitalized patients is between 10% and 30%, and it’s 58% among those in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator.

“As doctors and scientists, we look to the data for insight,” said Steven Kalkanis, CEO of the Henry Ford Medical Group. “And the data here is clear that there was a benefit to using the drug as a treatment for sick, hospitalized patients.”

Could the difference between this finding and those of other studies that found no benefit be the race of those being treated? Or could it be due to the timing of receiving the drug?

Patients with a median age of 64 were among those analyzed, with 51% men and 56% African American. Roughly 82% of the patients began receiving hydroxychloroquine within 24 hours and 91% within 48 hours, a factor Dr. Marcus Zervos identified as a potential key to the medication’s success.

As noted above this finding is sure to provoke comment, given the other studies finding the opposite and the politicization of the drug.

5 comments… add one
  • PD Shaw Link

    I don’t know.

  • Guarneri Link

    Steve might know, if he can put his politics aside. But everything I’ve seen says it has an impact if early and in conjunction with zinc.

    The drug has been around so long that any contraindications are surely known by now. It would just boil down to contraindications in the specific case of covid. Doctors are not prone to prescribing willy-nilly. But if, say a 70 year old presented with fever and breathing difficulties, why not try it?

  • Grey Shambler Link

    why not try it?

    Make the doctor look like a Trump supporter. Or a dog faced pony soldier. Lose his liberal friends, maybe his job. Career decision.

  • steve Link

    This is the first positive study on HCQ of sufficient size that it should taken seriously. I cant read their study, just what the news has reported but would make these observations.

    1) It is a recognized US system and lots of pts so it shouldn’t be ignored.

    2) They also say the following in the news report.

    “The study found about 20% of patients treated with a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin died and 22% who were treated with azithromycin alone compared with the 26% of patients who died after not being treated with either medication. ”

    So not sure if it was 20% or 13%. Big difference. (This is one of the reasons I hate not being able to read original studies and being dependent upon reading some reporter’s summation.

    3) The percentage who died w/o HCQ was 26%. That is very high. Our peer hospitals, mid sized academics, are seeing mortality rates of about 19% for hospitalized pts. 13% with treatment is a bit better than our 14% in the second part of our study when we added steroids.

    4) They claim to have added steroids and end up with a mortality rate, maybe, that others are seeing with steroids.

    5) I would discount the timing. We gave HCQ as soon as possible and if you are going to use it I would expect the same elsewhere. Race will be hard to track out. We didnt see it on our study, but this was larger.

    6) Would like to know how many had HCQ stopped if they were aggressively monitoring cardiac status as article claims. Is the study showing us that HCQ kills some pts and helps others? If you monitor cardiac function and avoid those deaths, then the drug is a positive? What do they mean by aggressive monitoring?

    7) All of the other Michigan hospitals reported what we saw. They tried it and didnt see any positive effects. We have ongoing controlled studies so we should definitely continue them is what I think we learn from this study. (That plus we need to see the original numbers and their methods.)

    “Make the doctor look like a Trump supporter. Or a dog faced pony soldier. Lose his liberal friends, maybe his job. Career decision.”

    We used and no one lost their job. U Michigan used it and no lone lost their job. Nearly every NYC hospital used and no one lost their job. You are really, really deep into right wing fantasy land here.

    Steve

  • Grey Shambler Link

    Cancel culture is real.
    It’s normally self enforcing and no punitive measures need to be taken by groupthink as decision makers are good enough chess players to foresee the consequences of their words or actions.
    It exists in universities and university research programs.
    It exists in every public and private business in America.
    Thank you for informing me that it doesn’t exist in hospitals, or decision making processes of physicians.
    I can see my sense of humor wasn’t recognized as such. I apologize for the attempt.

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