text_1: New Surgery to Treat Asthma
text_2: This story is chock full of testimonials praising an asthma treatment that uses radio waves to zap troublesome lung tissue. Readers would never guess that the editorial author who commented on the key trial of the device wrote that “The overall net effect of bronchial thermoplasty in the AIR2 trial is somewhat disappointing.” Indeed, based on the only double-blinded, randomized controlled trial of the device, almost all of the improvement reported by patients could be explained by a placebo effect, something the story doesn’t mention. The story does a commendable job on many of our criteria, but then it stumbles on the fundamental question of how much of an advance the new treatment really is. It also fails to alert readers to financial ties between researchers and the company now marketing a bronchial thermoplasty device. When someone says a new treatment is better, it is imperative to ask, “Better than what?” By failing to tell readers that most of the people in the control group also improved during the key test of this asthma treatment device, this story paints an overly rosy view. By our calculation, the number needed to treat with this approach is 7 – you’d need to treat 7 people in order for one to benefit. Wouldn’t that have been helpful information?