In my chiropractic office in San Diego, we see patients with back pain and also have patients who ask about nutrition for proper heart health. On May 15th, 2007, the Commonwealth Fund issued a report entitled, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care.”

The results were not good when it comes to American healthcare. In fact, here’s what the first sentence of the report had to say in this regard: “Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries. Are you shocked by this report? You shouldn’t be at all. Why is this? This is because this is nothing new.

According to the report it stated that among the six nations studied – Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States-the U.S. ranks last. This also occurred in the 2006 and 2004 editions of Mirror. The most troubling news is that the United States fails to achieve better health outcomes than the other countries, and as shown in the earlier editions, the United States is last on dimensions of access, patient safety, efficiency, and equity. It was right at the bottom. The 2007 edition includes data from the 6 countries and incorporates patients’ and physicians’ survey results on care experiences and ratings on various dimensions of care.

In general, Germany and the UK topped the list, with Canada and the United States raising up the rear. Also worth noting here is that America spends close to 3 times as much for its average approach to health per capita ($6,102) annually than does New Zealand ($2,083), and approximately twice as much as Canada ($3,165). Even poorer, American doctor’s offices are the slowest to change when it comes to tools, again, with the lowest numbers in relation to using electronic medical records or keeping up with the latest treatments via the Internet.

Now here is something that you will probably find fascinating, even mystifying. According to the account, the area where the U.S. healthiness care system performs best is defensive care, an area that has been monitored closely for over a decade by managed care plans.

The May 9th edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) had an article entitled: “Cardiologists Get Wake-up Call on Stents.” According to the article, “patients with stable coronary artery disease treated with stents and optimal medical therapy fare no better than those who receive optimal medical therapy alone, according to new findings from a large clinical trial.” It’s always been abundantly clear that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

For many hearts surgeons, the results serve as a wake-up call that they need to reconsider how often they offer stenting (which has small risks associated with the interference itself, as well as stent-associated thrombotic events) as a primary option for break of stable angina. The data comes from the Clinical Outcomes Utilizing Revascularization and Aggressive Drug Evaluation (COURAGE) Trial, reported here in March at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology.

It seems like research is simply confirming what many thought to be true all along. Prevention is far superior to invasive “crisis” procedures after years and years of neglect. It is abundantly clear you cannot abuse or neglect your body and health and have the wonders of modern medicine save you. For more information, contact New Century Spine Centers at 619-630-9153.

Learn more about cardiac health. Stop by the back pain website site where you can get free information about chiropractic care and what it can do for you.