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The heart polypill was covered on all three newscasts. NBC and CBS filed a brief mention by their in-house physicians, Nancy Snyderman and Jon LaPook respectively. ABC assigned John McKenzie to a full report. He predicted that the combo-medication--a single pill containing aspirin plus statin plus blood pressure relief--could "dramatically reduce the risk of heart disease" and be prescribed for more than 60m patients with healthy hearts nationwide. To qualify they would have to exhibit just one risk factor for eventual disease, thus also receiving treatment for symptoms they did not have. McKenzie cited the statistic that the polypill "could reduce the risk of heart disease by up to 62% and of strokes by 48%." NBC's Snyderman used the statistic "by 50% to 60%." CBS' LaPook said it could cut "your risk factors" in half, not the risk itself.
Again, Tyndall Report pleads with medical correspondents to use statistics less sloppily. As we asked when ABC's McKenzie filed his story on alcohol last month, risk is changed from what to what? A 60% reduction in risk from taking a polypill could mean improving one's odds dramatically--from 75% to 45% for example--or marginally--from, say, 14% to 8%. Without the odds, the percentage means nothing.
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