What is Sham Surgery?
Sham surgery is something like a placebo surgery: the patient is anesthetized, the surgeon makes some incisions, and then the incisions are sewed up and the patient is restored to consciousness. Because all the evidence suggests that the patient really did have a surgery, he or she will believe that the surgery took place. Sham surgery is used in some research trials to test the efficacy of surgical techniques, although the practice is not without controversy. In several clinical trials, including a study on Alzheimer’s patients and a study on patients with knee problems, sham surgery actually worked better than the real surgery, in terms of patient response. Over a period of extensive followup, patients who had undergone sham surgery indicated that they had experienced positive results after the surgery, with significant improvement in body function and quality of life. This raised interesting questions about the role of patient expectations in surgical treatment, and about how sham s
Related Questions
- If you are an NP/RNFA, for surgical procedures, would you bill under RNFA and not NP? Is there a different reimbursement rate? I noticed that the AORN Position statement indicates they are doing so as an APRN and not as an RNFA. How to bill?
- What is the cost of temporal lobe ectomy surgery?
- How much pain is typical after the surgery?
