Tout à fait d’accord avec Michel.

Mais pour relativiser encore une fois les choses, lorsque j’ai parti le débat 
initialement, j’ai senti que certains individus voulaient me faire passer pour 
un antisocial qui cautionnait les morts en sport de glisse. Question de 
perception certainement.

La question c’est qu’un casque bien mis, bien adapté au sport, etc. diminuera 
probablement la mortalité de 40-50-60 % peu importe le sport ou l’AVQ.

Donc, présenter les statistiques à la population en fait de pourcentage relatif 
est vrai, mais ne présente pas le problème à sa réelle valeur car tu ne part 
pas avec 100% des chances de te casser la gueule. Avoir présenté le problème 
avec diminution de la mortalité absolue aurait été beaucoup moins vendeur pour 
une loi. C’est exactement comme pour le Zocor l’autre jour. Et de dire qu’un 
casque lui aurait sauvé la vie à chaque accident, c’est de dire que le taux de 
protection du casque est de 100%, hors il meurt chaque jour des conducteurs 
attachés. Donc, comme tu vois, je ne suis pas convaincu de qui génère les 
exagérations.

Pendant que l’on débat ici du casque dans les sports de glisse, au sud de la 
frontière, certains en débattent pour le soccer :

http://www.classbrain.com/artfamily/publish/article_168.shtml

http://www.ericmcerlain.com/offwingopinion/archives/006315.php

je n’ai pas encore vu de débat pour le sport le plus dangereux pour les traumas 
crâniens graves, surtout chez l’enfant : le golf !

Mais peut-être qu’un jour ! 
http://www.made-in-china.com/china-products/productviewzeqnJTNjaQcl/Golf-Helmet-Half-Helmet-TT-8206-.html

  
<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YmsJqIZTz90/SPfnqY9JmQI/AAAAAAAAAIA/pTtRpj7Ro0c/s1600-h/LG+Helmet.jpg>
 

L’été approche, faut pas tout prendre au sérieux et apprendre à en rire un peu. 
Swing the ball !

 

PB

 

________________________________

De : Michael Garner [mailto:[email protected]] 
Envoyé : 2 avril 2009 18:12
À : Pierre Beaupré
Objet : URG-L: FW: Did Canadian Healthcare Kill Natasha Richardson??!!

 

Je laisse passer pour ne pas raviver le débat, mais il fut assez 
uni-directionnel, alors que les deux points de vue sont entièrement défendables

 

Michel Garner

[email protected]

 

On 2-Apr-09, at 5:53 PM, Bernard Mathieu wrote:

 

C'est drôle que 2 ou trois personnes reviennent à tout bout de champ avec des 
exemples ridicules comme ça et font passer la majorité des gens qui croient à 
cette mesure de prévention pour des morons.

Franchement peut-on passer à autre chose?

 

Bernard

Le 09-04-02 à 17:19, Michael Garner a écrit :





Quoi ? Il avait un casque ??? :-)

 

 

En passant, sans vouloir raviver le débat, il y avait une lettre à l'éditeur 
dans la Gazette comme quoi il faudrait imposer un loi pour quye les danseuses 
nues portent un casque, parce que le manœuvre du poteau, quand elles sont à 
l'envers, la tête en bas, est nettement à risque...

 

 

Michel Garner

[email protected]

 

 

 

 

On 2-Apr-09, at 8:21 AM, Pierre Beaupré wrote:





En passant, épidural temporal G. hier soir. Glasgow à environ 15, seulement un 
peu ralenti, mais souffrant.

Il aurait eu son TDM, mais l’histoire récente de Mme Richardson a probablement 
contribué à accéléré les choses, le patient ayant une douleur surtout en 
temporal. Hx de perte de conscience très courte, Pas d’hélicoptère et stable 
pendant le transport.

Les épiduraux ne sont pas si fréquents. Loi des séries ?

Le casque avait pris le bord quand l’arbre qu’il coupait a frappé à la porte.

 

PB

 

________________________________

De : Alain Vadeboncoeur [mailto:[email protected]] 
Envoyé : 2 avril 2009 00:08
À : Pierre Beaupré
Objet : URG-L: FW: Did Canadian Healthcare Kill Natasha Richardson??!!

 

 

 

________________________________

From: Laura Boylan [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: 2 avril 2009 00:03
To: Laura Boylan
Subject: Did Canadian Healthcare Kill Natasha Richardson??!!

Thank you to all I communicated with who helped me in writing this piece, 
particularly to my Canadian colleagues.  I am grateful for your input and 
suggestions.  This will soon be posted on the Physicians for a National Health 
Program blog and I encourage you to use, quote, or distribute as you are moved 
to do!  Thanks et merci!


Did Canadian Healthcare Kill Natasha Richardson??!!  

In an example of the circus of fear and hyperbole surrounding the health care 
debate, opponents of government involvement in health care are exploiting 
Natasha Richardson’s tragic death from a skiing accident.  The New York Post 
reports “Canadacare May Have Killed Natasha.”. The blogosphere has headlines 
like “Canada’s Killer Healthcare”.  Here are the bare facts: Natasha Richardson 
died from an epidural hematoma, a condition that requires urgent evaluation and 
surgical treatment.  When treated early enough, this injury is rarely fatal.   
It is, therefore, reasonable to ask how different health care systems handle 
this sort of emergency.  

Ms. Richardson initial refusal of an ambulance cost about two hours.  With 
20/20 hindsight we know this was a bad decision.  However, it’s also true that 
“feeling okay” after a minor head injury is, in fact, a powerful predictor of a 
good outcome.  But bad things do happen.   Patients with an epidural hematoma 
may initially feel and look well, this is referred to as a “lucid interval.”  
After the ambulance was summoned for a second time, only three hours and forty 
minutes elapsed before Ms. Richardson arrived at a neurotrauma center in 
Montreal.  On the way she was evaluated and stabilized at a community hospital 
with modern imaging facilities.   Apparently, however, it was still too late.  

Many have asserted that Ms. Richardson would have fared better in the United 
States.  This is far from certain.  With epidural hematomas, it’s all in the 
timing.  The intervention required is one of the simplest in neurosurgery.    
Helicopter airlift, or the lack thereof, has been a focus of criticism of Ms. 
Richardson’s care.   An immediately available helicopter might have helped Ms. 
Richardson if used to transfer her directly from the resort to Montreal.  It’s 
hard to know.  However, it does not follow that the profusion of medical 
helicopter services in the United States makes Americans safer. 

As reported by the Institute of Medicine, neurosurgeons are often unavailable 
to provide emergency and trauma care in the US.   Detailed data on patients 
referred to specialty hospitals for emergency neurosurgical evaluations is 
available for Cook County, Illinois.  This county, which includes Chicago, is 
densely populated.  Total time elapsed from arrival to a community hospital to 
arrival at the specialty hospital averaged 11 hours.  The comparable time 
period for Ms. Richardson, who had an accident in rural Quebec, was less than 3 
hours.   In Cook County most patients would still be awaiting an imaging study 
at the first hospital.  

 The Austin American-Statesman reported in 2002 that a man with a vertebral 
fracture after a fall waited 8 hours in an Austin emergency room before being 
airlifted to Temple because no local neurosurgeon was available.  In Temple he 
waited two days for surgery and was eventually billed over $4,000 for the 
helicopter.  In the end, it turned out that there had, in fact, been a 
neurosurgeon available in Austin, however he worked at a hospital in a 
competing network.   This is just one case, but it does illustrate how business 
incentives distort quality in our healthcare system.

US helicopter medical evacuation services are extensive, but tend to address 
market rather than public health imperatives.   Helicopters are concentrated in 
urban rather than rural areas.   Alarming fatality rates due to accidents 
during medical helicopter evacuations have led to headlines such as in “Critics 
Say Emergency Medical Helicopters Are Overused and Offer Few Benefits to 
Patients” (Wall Street Journal 2005).  

It’s different in Canada.  In Quebec, while there is no helicopter service 
there is a fixed wing air ambulance service..  Fixed wing craft require a 
landing strip but are much faster.  In addition to being used for long distance 
emergencies in this vast province, several times a week, Quebeckers from remote 
regions are flown to the city to obtain non-emergency medical care not 
available locally.  All of this is free to patients, who are covered by 
Canadian Medicare.  Other provinces do have helicopter evacuation services, and 
these have a better safety record than their US counterparts.

A really good emergency medical system addresses the continuum of care from 
prevention to pre-hospital care to rehabilitation.  Nova Scotia, a not-wealthy 
largely rural Canadian province, has created a model program of integrated 
services, which others have aimed to reproduce.  Dr. Ronald Stewart, who 
championed the program first as a legislator and then as Minister of Health 
engineered the replacement of fragmented private services with a unified public 
system in the 90s.  Innovation has thrived with a profusion of influential 
research papers on, for example, medically appropriate helicopter triage, head 
injury treatment guidelines, and detailed reports of clinical characteristics 
and outcomes of all surgical interventions on injuries of the sort Ms. 
Richardson had.  The average wait time for neurosurgical emergency treatment in 
Nova Scotia, by the way, is less than in Cook County.   

I have worked for years in a variety of different sorts of US healthcare 
facilities including inner city hospitals, private academic referral centers, 
rural community hospitals and the Department of Veterans Affairs.   A uniform 
truth, alas, is that financial incentives play a major role in who gets what 
care and when.  We have scarcity in the midst of excess, to the detriment of 
patients on both receiving ends.  If you are uninsured and socially undesirable 
you can die in Manhattan from an epidural hematoma, despite rapid arrival to an 
emergency room and what must surely be one of the world’s densest 
concentrations of medical subspecialty care.  I’ve seen it.  Trauma patients 
are disproportionately uninsured and are considered a high medicolegal 
liability risk.  Our entire emergency care system is overwhelmed, in large 
part, due to lack of universal access to other health care.  As a result, all 
Americans are left to rely on a distorted emergency system.  When it comes to 
effective clinical emergency care we should emulate Canada’s single payer 
system, not congratulate ourselves on helicopter availability in Aspen.


Hyperlinks to information sources:
Institute of Medicine, 2006.  Key Findings and Recommendations from the series 
of reports on the Future of Emergency Care in the U.S.  
<http://www.iom.edu/CMS/3809/16107/35007/35040.aspx> 
Austin American-Statesman. Neurosurgeons in short supply 
<http://www.statesman.com/specialreports/content/specialreports/healthcare/0519neurosurgeons.html>
 , 5/19/2002.  
Neurosurgery. 2008 Mar;62(3):709-16.  Neurosurgical emergency transfers to 
academic centers in Cook County: a prospective multicenter study 
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18425017> .
Air Ambulances Are Under Fire; Critics Say Emergency Medical Helicopters Are 
Overused and Offer Few Benefits to Patients <http://goog_1238588623407/>  . 
<http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=801837211&sid=5&Fmt=3&clientId=83650&RQT=309&VName=PQD&cfc=1>
   Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Mar 3, 2005. pg. D.1 
Air Ambulance Services in Quebec, provincial government website 
<http://www.msg.gouv.qc.ca/en/aerien/mission/evacuation.asp> .  
Emergency Service System in Nova Scotia, provincial government website 
<http://www.gov.ns.ca/ehs/> 

best regards,

Laura S. Boylan, MD
Clinical Associate Professor of Neurology
New York University School of Medicine
Department of Veterans Affairs
NY Harbor Healthcare System
http://www.med.nyu.edu/people/boylal01.html
212-865-0057




 

 

 

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