‘If You Wait That Long, You Will Have Waited Too Long’: What We Heard This Week

“If you wait that long, you will have waited too long.” — Lori Handy, MD, MSCE, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, responding to the FDA Commissioner’s comment that he wouldn’t give his young child antibiotics “unless he is on his deathbed or suffering.”

“It can generate ideas in seconds, but it is not a doctor who knows you.” — Jen Brull, MD, board chair of the American Academy of Family Physicians, discussing the pitfalls of artificial intelligence after Microsoft launched a health-focused chatbot.

“This suggests vaccine hesitancy and delayed decision-making, not lack of access, are the main barriers.” — Brian Jenssen, MD, MSHP, of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, on research that showed many adolescents in a large primary care network were not fully vaccinated against human papillomavirus before their sexual debut.

“It is inexpensive. It is easy to administer.” — Kari Tikkinen, MD, PhD, of the University of Helsinki, advocating for greater use of tranexamic acid in urologic surgery to reduce major bleeding risk.

“You want a line between DEI and not DEI — my line is research that has no chance of actually improving human health, I don’t want to fund that.” — Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, NIH Director and Acting CDC Director, responding to lawmakers’ concerns about researcher diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

“I think [patients] start to realize that it’s really not the doctors, it’s really the insurance industry that’s causing their grief.” — An anonymous physician discussing the trend of practices charging patients for prior authorization requests or annual administrative fees.

“This significant methodological issue undermined the results and conclusions of the publications.” — Tim Kersjes of Springer Nature, after the publisher retracted more than three dozen autism publications that relied on a problematic dataset.

“Patients who did not hold at least one dose of the medication prior to surgery or endoscopy should be rescheduled.” — Tilak Shah, MD, MHS, of Cleveland Clinic Florida in Weston, on research that showed GLP-1 drug users had significant residual gastric volume unless the medication was held or they were on a clear liquid diet the day before.