Talk:Treatments for overactive bladder

Advantages/disadvantages fields in table

• Note - This discussion began at Talk:Overactive bladder and was moved here to Talk:Treatments for overactive bladder when the article content being discussed was also moved. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:16, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Although there is not anything remarkably wrong here, I get a feeling that this is not entirely encyclopedic... should wikipedia serve as window shopping for people to decide which drug suits them?

Also, one pill per day, 2 pill per day... presumably this has been sorted from the patient's convenience point of view, but what are the pharmacologic advantages? Do they coincide? It might be a more effective way to deliver drug X as 3 pills per day than 1 pill per day from a pharacologic point of view ... Consider merging advantages and disadvantages into one column? Lesion (talk) 15:56, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking of this, and yes, this has come up before. I am doing this as a paid employee so consider cross-posting criticism to make a permanent record at WP:Consumer Reports. I am still thinking of ways to document criticism. Could I reply to you there? I have done this at other articles and I should condense feedback. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:07, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I am thinking of moving this table to its own article for comparison of drugs, so that people would find it only if they are looking for it. There is a precedent for this at Anti-diabetic medication, where I contributed to a similar table there. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:12, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Not really criticism per se, just questioning if this is normal because I hadn't seen this done elsewhere before ... Anti-diabetic medication looks great. "Consumer" advantages/disadvantages seem much less out of place in that context as you say. However, I wonder if there is enough content on medication for this topic to fill a stand alone article? Lesion (talk) 16:25, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I am still thinking about this. An example of when I have made an article comparing drugs is at Drugs for acid-related disorders. In that article, I never followed through an added more content, although more content can be found. I had some data about generic availability and that is still there, although after I researched more I realized that it would be very difficult to find out the countries in which drugs were available in generic form and to signal that somehow. Let me think more - I am drafting an article just for overactive bladder medication and I do think I have some interesting MEDRS sources for this, but I want feedback about how useful this is. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:59, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

How does Treatments for overactive bladder strike you? I was thinking of linking a section in overactive bladder, frequent urination, and the articles of various drugs and treatments to this. My goal in this is to conform layman audiences and patients about the choices they have in treatment, if they seek out more information. No, Wikipedia should not be a place for patients to seek advice on treatment or to make drug choices, but Wikipedia articles on health are some of the most popular articles on Wikipedia and this is because patients are coming here for something. I am still thinking. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:51, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I responded to your "window shopping" concern at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Choosing_Wisely#Medical_content_on_Wikipedia. Thanks for voicing your concern - call it what you like whether criticism or comment but either way I appreciate it and talk about these things with a lot of other people. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:17, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Looks good. You may be interested in this Cochrane review: [1], although the free full text is not available in some countries I understand.

I am still a bit uncomfortable with saying one pill per day is good and three per day is bad. One pill per day is good for compliance, but in terms of the actual pharmacology, three pills per day may be a better way to deliver the drug... In the latter scenario, three pills per day might be considered good by patients and doctors alike, although most tend to say that the drug will only be effective if the compliance is good, and therefore choose the easiest drug regimen.

Drug cost is also not important to patients in some countries with socialized medicine, but probably this is useful information for most parts of the world. Lesion (talk) 18:50, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for moving your table, Bluerasberry, I think having a separate article for treatment looks much better. A mechanism column would be very useful. I am a little uncomfortable classifying all aspects of those drugs into 'advantages' and 'disadvantages' and also feel that the number of pills provided per day should be viewed as a fixed property of each drug rather than an advantage or a disadvantage. I don't think cost to the consumer should be included, this is extremely variable within and between countries. LT90001 (talk) 23:47, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I will get to that Cochrane paper. I just got a subscription through WP:COCHRANE so I should be able to access it. I would add a mechanism section if I could.

Thanks for checking my bias about fewer pills for day. I believe - perhaps more strongly that I should - that a large number of patients have terrible compliance to taking their medication and routinely skip doses and even days taking them, so I like the note about fewer pills but would never want to give the impression that health effects are necessarily equivalent. I will reform this table to call things "traits" or something similar.

I would like to capture cost but there are large barriers to doing so, and I am realizing that I am unable to do this properly in many cases. I will remove that also but excuse me I need time - 1-2 days. Thanks for the feedback. Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:59, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I still have not fixed this. Just now I removed all information about relative cost because I have no international data on this. If I did have internationally relevant data and sources reporting this then I would like to re-examine some kind of cost reporting. It is my belief - but I have not identified the right sources discussing this - that the cost variation between some of these drugs can often be such that one treatment costs 10x more than another in places where patients buy the drugs, and that this information is reported by some reliable sources. Right now I do not have good sources for sharing this kind of information. About pros and cons - some people have pointed out that some pros seem like cons and vice versa. I re-listed everything as traits. Still to do -

• Shrink the presentation of this huge table to be a smaller list on the side of the page
• incorporate some information about different mechanisms of action per request, if I can find and incorporate the right sources.

Sorry about the continued deferral of managing this content. It is a work in progress and I have not forgotten it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:22, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

No need to apologize for not finishing something Blue Rasberry, everything on Wikipedia is a work in progress. Personally, I'm much happier about advantages and disadvantages being merged to "traits". Whilst the same content is preserved, it just seems more encyclopedic to me, but that's just my opinion, not sure what the consensus is for this type of thing. Might be worth starting a thread at WTMED if you want more opinions/feedback... Lesion (talk) 11:02, 29 September 2013 (UTC)