Annual report of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital : 1919.

  • Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.
Date:
1919
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital : 1919. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    * in a recent monograph on a special topic, the acoustic neuromas, and it is hoped that the table may from time to time be brought up to date to give specific information of the duration of life of these patients, treated in a certain way, until a standard can be established which will be of use here and elsewhere; not because someone else who may get less good results should therefore not be permitted to do such operations, but for the purpose of encouraging someone else to get better results. I feel that it is this type of end-result group study which is of infinitely more value to a hospital and to surgeons in general than elab¬ orate annual studies of end results of all the cases of all kinds from the service. What I would like to see established would be an inter¬ hospital investigation of this sort, under the aegis of the College of Surgeons. Undoubted benefits would ensue, I believe, if, for example, all the hospitals in this com¬ munity, or a selected group more widely distributed, should agree to concentrate their statistical studies for a given year on a certain topic — let us say, for example, on their results of operation for exophthalmic goitre, or for cancer of the stomach, covering, let us say, a ten-year period, and eliminating all other considerations except for the barest figures regarding the other surgical work of the institution for the year. If some such plan were put in operation, the College could assemble the data from the various hospital reports material which would become of enormous value to clinicians, and these reports would be¬ come of great service to Medicine instead of being, as they are, largely of comparative interest alone to hospital administrators.