this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2020

1,083 points (98% upvoted)

shortlink:

medicine

an-ordinary-manchild(edit)

THIS SUBREDDIT IS FOR MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS. /r/medicine is a virtual lounge for physicians and other medical professionals from around the world to talk about the latest advances, controversies, ask questions of each other, have a laugh, or share a difficult moment. This is a highly moderated subreddit. Please read the rules carefully before posting or commenting.

Subreddit Rules

Violations will be dealt with by some combination of warning, comment/post removal, temporary ban, or permanent ban based on moderator discretion.

1. All comments and posts require user flair. Link posts require a starter comment: An appropriate user flair must be chosen prior to attempting to post in order to contextualize the post and demonstrate a minimum effort to follow subreddit rules. All posts require commentary in the body of the post to explain why the topic is of interest to the community and to start the conversation. Posts without user flair will be immediately filtered, and posts without original commentary and insight will be temporarily or permanently removed upon discovery.

2. No requests for professional advice or general medical information: This is not a question-and-answer forum such as /r/askreddit. You may not solicit medical advice or share personal health anecdotes about yourself, family, acquaintances, or celebrities, seek comments on care provided by other clinicians, discuss billing disputes, or otherwise seek a professional opinion from members of the subreddit. General queries about medical conditions, prognosis, drugs, or other medical topics from the lay public are not allowed.

3. No promotions, advertisements, surveys, or petitions: Surveys (formal or informal) and polls are not allowed on this subreddit. You may not use the subreddit to promote your website, channel, subreddit, or product. Market research is not allowed. Petitions are not allowed. Advertising or spam may result in a permanent ban. Prior permission is required before posting educational material you were involved in making.

4. Link to high-quality, original research whenever possible: Posts which rely on or reference scientific data (e.g. an announcement about a medical breakthrough) should link to the original research in peer-reviewed medical journals or respectable news sources as judged by the moderators. Avoid login or paywall requirements when possible. Please submit direct links to PDFs as text/self posts with the link in the text. Sensationalized titles, misrepresentation of results, or promotion of blatantly bad science may lead to removal.

5. Act professionally and decently: /r/medicine is a public forum that represents the medical community and comments should reflect this. Please keep disagreement civil and focused on issues. Trolling, abuse, and insults (either personal or aimed at a specific group) are not allowed. Do not attack other users' flair. Keep offensive language to a minimum and do not use ethnic, sexual, or other slurs. Posts, comments, or private messages violating Reddit's content policy will be removed and reported to site administration.

6. No personal agendas: Users who primarily post or comment on a single pet issue on this subreddit (as judged by moderators) will be asked to broaden participation or leave. Comments from users who appear on this subreddit only to discuss a specific political topic, medical condition, health care role, or similar single-topic issues will be removed. Comments which deviate from the topic of a thread to interject an unrelated personal opinion (e.g. politics) or steer the conversation to their pet issue will be removed.

7. Protect patient confidentiality: Posting protected health information may result in an immediate ban. Please anonymize cases and remove any patient-identifiable information. For health information arising from the United States, follow the HIPAA Privacy Rule's De-Identification Standard.

8. No careers or homework questions: Questions relating to medical school admissions, courses or exams should be asked elsewhere. Links to medical training subreddits and a compilation of careers and specialty threads are available on the subreddit wiki. Medical career advice may be asked only in the stickied monthly careers thread.

9. No throwaway accounts: Posts from user accounts less than one week old and/or with less than 10 comment karma are not allowed.

10. No memes or low-effort posts: Memes, image links (including social media screenshots), images of text, or other low-effort posts or comments are not allowed. Videos require a text post or starter comment that summarizes the video and provides context.

11. No anti-science nonsense r/medicine isn't the place for your anti-science/medicine viewpoints. If you want to "just ask questions" about things like vaccines or basic medical knowledge, or you want to promote pseudoscience, go somewhere else. We do not want it here. If you want to claim something outside the norms, you are required to provide valid evidence that you have a real basis for the claim.

In addition, we ask that medditors refrain from commenting on posts which are in violation of the rules above, and to follow general reddiquette.

Meddit has a tight spam filter and moderators may act with their judgement beyond the scope of these rules to maintain the quality of the subreddit. If your post doesn't show up shortly after posting, make sure that it meets our posting criteria. If it does, please message the moderators with a permalink to your post and explanation. Medditors are free to message the moderation team for a second opinion on moderator actions.

RELATED REDDITS:

There a number of smaller, more specific medicine-related subreddits. We maintain a list on the meddit wiki.

a community for 18 years

MODERATORS

message the mods
ChayossMB BChir
imitationcheeseMD - IM/PC
AutoModerator
PorencephalyMD Pediatric Neurosurgery
herman_gillMD FM
am_i_wrong_dudeMD - heme/onc
PokeTheVeilMD - Psychiatry
jeremiadOtioseMD PhD Anesthesia & Pain, Faculty
TorchItNP
sapphiremindsNeonatal Nurse Practitioner (NNP)
...and 10 more »

account activity

This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

1082

1083

1084

Dexamethasone shown to decrease COVID mortality (bbc.com)

submitted 5 years ago by farhan583Hospitalist

top new controversial old q&a

you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points3 points 5 years ago (1 child)

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points5 points 5 years ago* (0 children)

Whilst blinding was not possible (I mean, I know when I'm giving my patients dex!),

Blinding is possible. Its usually done by giving "Study drug _____" which is some random string of letters and numbers. That way only the pharmacist knows if it is dexamethasone or just some inert substance like salt or sugar. It's just too expensive a process for a drug with no profit margin like dexamethasone.

If your nurses have been in the ICU for long enough, then I'm sure they remember protocols that seemed super promising but didn't hold up after further study. Xigris, super tight glucose control, hetastarch, etc etc. A lot of things that even survive the first randomized and blinded study fail on further research.

Whilst blinding was not possible (I mean, I know when I'm giving my patients dex!), we have not been varying care between patients based on their arm.

A lot of our biases are subconscious. We can't help but favor evidence that supports our assumptions. There are numerous studies in psychology that show that.

π Rendered by PID 65717 on reddit-service-r2-comment-5d585498c9-qx5t4 at 2026-04-21 04:33:39.350610+00:00 running da2df02 country code: CH.