A balding man needed to know if a hair transplant would reduce his risk of heart trouble. A vasectomy patient demanded his doctor reverse the procedure, hoping it would eliminate a possible link to prostate cancer. And several elderly women, as confused as the balding man and vasectomy patient were about recent medical news, canceled their mammography appointments after reading a recent front-page headline in The New York Times that stated “Studies Say Mammograms Fail to Help Many Women.”
Those are the stories-more prevalent by the day-that appear to be trying physicians’ patience. Amid fear, concern and bewilderment, a health-conscious populace is pelting doctors with questions they never imagined they would hear, queries that spring from a seemingly bottomless well of medical studies that doctors often consider unsound and overhyped, authorities said.
“We’re seeing more and more people scared and confused by some of these sensationalized and inconclusive studies,” said Dr. Janet Baum, director of breast imaging at Beth Israel Hospital and assistant professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School. “The volume of new information is incredible, and it’s becoming harder all the time for experts to sort through it, never mind the lay person.”
After reports were published that the results of a controversial study that indicated women under age 50 did not benefit from mammograms, several women in their 70s and 80s canceled appointments at Beth Israel’s Breast Care Center, mistakenly forgoing screenings that virtually all specialists recommend for women their ages, Baum said.
The mammography news came on the heels of other reports of a study about a indicating that men under 55 with bald spots on top of their heads faced a slight increase in the risk of heart attack, and other studies about the slight risk of prostate cancer among men who have had vasectomies.
All three studies sent countless patients scrambling for their telephones, besieging many physicians with a new round of inquiries that struck many as oddly familiar.
“Over and over again, I’ve told patients that I’m not going to depend on stories about olive oil, Mediterranean diets and French wine to make major changes in their treatments,” said Dr. Julian Aroesty, chief of clinical cardiology at Beth Israel and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “The same applies to the story about baldness. Some studies just aren’t thorough or accurate enough to cause that.”
“The sensation surrounding it became much greater than the reality of the findings,” said Dr. Michael Greenwald, a Brookline dermatologist who specializes in treating baldness.
Greenwald said he puts little stock in the study, which was conducted by researchers from the Boston University School of Medicine and financed by Upjohn Co., which makes minoxidil.
“I don’t think it’s very significant,” he said. “It’s a heartbreaking experience to lose your hair at an early age, but I haven’t seen anything that convinces me the incidence of heart attacks is higher among these people.”
The vasectomy study, however, has prompted a different reaction. A number of urologists temporarily have stopped conducting vasectomies, while others are detailing the study’s findings to patients before they perform the procedures, according to Dr. Bryant Barnard, president of the Massachusetts Association of Practicing Urologists.
Barnard said he and his partners in Beverly and Gloucester told patients who were scheduled to undergo vasectomies that “the prudent thing is to sit tight and wait until more information is available.”
He said a patient who had a vasectomy more than 15 years ago pressed him to reverse the procedure, prompting him to schedule an upcoming visit to discuss the request. Barnard said the American Urological Association has suggested that physicians should not recommend reversing vasectomies.
“We don’t know whether a reversal would fix anything,” he said. “And we still don’t know whether having a vasectomy increases the risk of prostate cancer.”
The findings, he said, contradicted the conclusions of several previous studies.
Although a number of patients have canceled their vasectomy appointments, he said, others appear to have become desensitized by the barrage of new medical information in the popular press.
“A week doesn’t go by when you don’t pick up the paper and read that baldness, fat, vasectomies or something else is linked to cancer or heart disease,” he said. “Some people are getting overloaded and saying, `I’m just going to live sensibly because, after all, I could get hit by a car while I’m crossing the street.’ “
Other physicians said the media sometime overblow concerns about minor medical findings to suit their audiences.
“I have a sense there is a strong bias toward reporting stories that might well frighten or concern people, particularly stories about things like baldness and vasectomies, which may have the connotation of being a bit sexy,” said Dr. Robert S. Stern, a dermatologist at Beth Israel. “Those findings tend to be played up rather than reports on things like the risks of smoking.”
