Simul Parikh: Radiation oncology publishing has moved into an ‘agenda-driven’ direction

Quoting Simul Parikh, Medical Director of OncoHealth and Lake Huron Medical Center, on LinkedIn:

”Radiation oncology publishing has moved into an ‘agenda-driven’ direction.

There was a recent article in the “International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, and Physics” (The Red Journal/American Society for Radiation Oncology) called ‘Trends in Utilization and Medicare Spending on Shorter vs. Longer Radiotherapy Courses for Breast and Prostate Cancer’. I

t was rife with mistakes, tables with errors, misinterpretation of the data and then a conclusion that was, frankly, incorrect. This was all to provide support for a new payment reform proposal that has been widely criticized and unsupported by most community radiation oncologists.

Mark Storey wrote a long-form take down of this article and found that the opposite conclusions were actually true. It is called ‘Market trends: A Rebuttal’ and I strongly recommend you read it. It is a highly analytical and data driven look at what the authors wrote and you can find it.

“The Accelerators Podcast” also produced an episode shortly after the article was published and we finally released that yesterday. We do hope you listen.”

Source: Simul Parikh/LinkdIn