Re: 20/20 Report on PolyHeme

How did you find out which hospitals were using it? I must not be googling the right questions.



Chris wrote:
Did any of you guys catch this the night before last? It was a report
on the new blood product called PolyHeme for use in severely bleeding
patients and whether or not you knew/realized you are/were a potential
guinea pig for the study? Basically, if you wind up being treated by a
hospital participating in the study, the ONLY way to avoid being a
participant is to be wearing a bracelet available from the company
indicating you do not want to participate--that or be one of the
ambulance passengers for whom no card-trick is performed. lol. I
checked the website, and two hospitals in my state participate.

The show interviewed folks walking in downtown Denver to see how many
of them knew they should be wearing a bracelet if they did not want to
be a participant - none did. It also showed them interviewing an FDA
big-wig, and the interview was cut short after what appeared to be one
question by a lady standing off-camera. The doctor heavily involved in
the study avoided direct answers like the plague, especially in
response to the "faulty" study performed in the past when asked if that
were really appropriate to be using on humans at that time. I believe
there were incidences of MIs and death in some patients. There was one
man who received the PolyHeme after a severe car accident who was in a
coma for four months and something mentioned about the hospital having
to switch to good ol' regular blood upon the request of a relative,
which his mother did, and something about a 12-hour window.

The portion that bothered me most was that they showed an ambulance
driver who, when asked how they determine who receives the PolyHeme
versus good ol' saline drips, pulled a manilla-type envelope from a box
with letters on it and said "This tells us who gets it and who
doesn't." A lottery! lol.

There was no mention whatsoever of what the consequences are or could
be, how the body processes the substance, etc. I mean, do you wind up
having to have dialysis to clean it out afterward? Also, did you just
save someone's life today who could wind up developing liver cancer or
something else serious 20 years from now, rendering them a
liver-transplant patient to suffer later?

Who knows, but it does bother me. I just can't believe it isn't the
other way around, probably because they would not get many folks
requesting a bracelet to be a volunteer for this study. I can see
needing to use it for all seriously bleeding patients in an ambulance
ride, especially when they are an hour away from a hospital, but
continuing to do so after their arrival because their family doesn't
know to request regular blood and just to push it as far as they can?
Why on earth would they not have a set of medical criteria to establish
who receives it versus pulling a card out of a box is beyond me.

.

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