I first met Ajay Singh when he came to St John Hospital as part of a symposium on chronic kidney disease in 2004 or 2005. It was a great meeting and Singh gave two memorable lectures.
The first was a dismantling of the MDRD equation as an accurate measure of GFR. He was speaking against an equation that was way better than a simple creatinine but had some real problems, especially when used in patients without kidney disease. It was a inflammatory and a bit wonky for a conference directed to primary care doctors. Here we, the local nephrologists, were trying to get our doctors to recognize occult CKD by abandoning serum creatinine in favor of the superior eGFR and then the invited expert comes in and tells them how stupid this is.
His second lecture was the correction of anemia dog-and-pony show. He gave an amazing and persuasive presentation in favor of correcting of anemia in renal disease. Though the data was all retrospective and observational it was clear that Dr. Singh was personally a few steps past equipoise. At the time CHOIR was in full swing recruiting and retaining patients and my group was part of that process as a research site for CHOIR.
Five or so years later he returned to talk with our fellows and staff regarding anemia. This was after the publication of CHOIR, but I believe before the release of TREAT, though my memory is a bit hazy on the timing.
What I do remember is that he talked about the dangers of correcting anemia and the lack of data supporting its use. I remember being so angry. I felt that for the last half dozen years I had worked to convince my CKD patients that they needed to enroll in our anemia clinic, needed to come to our office for EPO shots and iron infusions, and that all this would make them feel better, protect their heart and prolong their life, all purported advantages of ESA therapy. And now Mr. Harvard returns and tells us that this is wrong, without ever apologizing, without even mentioning how he’d jumped the fence.
I stopped him mid-lecture and told him that the last time he’d been in Detroit he’d been telling us how important it was to treat anemia and now he had completely changed positions. Dr. Singh paused, looked at me, and gave the best answer possible. I can’t remember his exact words, so I’m paraphrasing here,
“The data has changed. Now we know more and what I’m telling you is what is currently correct. In medicine, there is no room for intellectual loyalty. We must be loyal to our patients not our theories. The reason my position has changed is that I am following the data. Would you want me to do anything else?”
His answer completly satisfied me and it extuinguished my rage. I was better able to deal with my regret and embarrassment at having to abandon a long held belief and practice pattern at the feet of new data.
His new blog is off to a flying start with a productivity that hasn’t been seen since Nate Hellman and quality that, to my eyes, no one can match.
Thanks Ajay, I’m looking forward to following your blog.
When I was a fellow at University of Chicago, just after the turn of the century, I did literature searches and then divided my PubMed bounty into articles I could download directly and those articles I would need to stalks the stacks to retrieve from hardcover bound versions of the journal. Any article in the latter group needed to be really important for it to be worth the extra-effort.
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