A landmark clinical trial published in this journal in 2006 expanded the evidence base for breast cancer screening with mammography. Subsequently, the US Preventive Services Task Force-a major advisory body for screening guidelines-reconsidered its recommendation for routine mammography among women aged 40-49 years. Vinayak Prasad and Adam Cifu point to this turnabout as an example of "medical reversal": when a current clinical practice is found to be ineffective or inferior to a previous standard of care. My female patients who are younger than 50 years now meet my recommendation to forgo screening with a sceptical eye. Doesn't it make sense to detect cancer early, when something can be done? Why did medicine change its mind about this issue? Enter Prasad and Cifu, who get to the heart of these questions in Ending Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives, a substantive book written with the deft touch of practising clinicians. The value in simply coining the term "medical reversal" should not be underestimated. Equipped with this lens, the book reveals an abundance of recent reversals: vertebroplasty for back pain, flecainide for premature ventricular contractions, bevacizumab for breast cancer, and glycaemic control in intensive care units, to name a few.
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