I do feel slightly guilty about this, because there are some very good health charities out there. BMJ summer column. Dear [health journalist], As awareness day/week/month for [disease] is coming up fast—just the thing for those summer slow news days!—we have lots to offer you for features, comment, articles, photos! CELEBRITY! We are very happy […]
Continue Reading →We are in serious trouble over screening
BMJ summer column, here but cut and pasted till the login works below. We are in serious trouble over screening. For all that medicine has cringed at paternalism and “doctor knows best,” has wrung its collective hands, and promised to do better, screening is still the last great preserve of unethical practice. If you are […]
Continue Reading →DVT, uncertainty and hospitals
You and Yours today had a feature about thrombosis. They suggest on their website that “hospitals are failing to risk assess patients for DVT resulting in thousands dying needlessly”. The mortality issue around preventing DVT – blood clots – in hospitals is a very interesting one. NICE guidelines last year said that ” A note of […]
Continue Reading →NSAIDs and cardiac arrhythmias
I am beginning to understand Twitter a bit. I was intending to go and write about the headlines earlier this week, about NSAIDs and the risk of cardiac arrhythmias, which made several front pages earlier this week. The Metro put it like this ” popular painkillers such as ibuprofen can put patients at risk of heart […]
Continue Reading →New law on irradiating well people: will it stop screening companies profiting?
I don’t know. I hope so. An amendment has been made to the Ionising Radiation (Medical Exposure) (Amendment) Regulations 2011. It comes into force on July 25th. It says that “At the end of regulation 3(a) (application) of the Ionising Radiation (Medical Exposure) Regulations 2000(3) after “medical diagnosis or treatment” insert “, including any exposure […]
Continue Reading →The Surgical Checklist – twitter journal club
Quite excited about Twitter journal club, which is 8pm on Sunday @twitjournalclub The paper for TODAY(!) is “A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population“. At the time it was published ,in 2009 in the NEJM, I had concerns about it, here. A few other people did too, but criticisms […]
Continue Reading →Instantly diagnosing mild dementia; not possible/not desirable
Today GPs are no good at diagnosing dementia. Clare Gerada did good work on You and Yours today discussing a paper just out from Leicester University. The press release says that “general practitioners (GPs) are struggling to correctly identify people in the early stages of dementia resulting in both missed cases (false negatives) and misidentifications […]
Continue Reading →Sick people die more often: not very surprising
ASSOCIATION IS NOT CAUSATION. Now that I’ve cleared that up, let us examine the paper causing the headlines today . “Over 65s who take more than one medicine should consult their doctors. Taking some commonly used medications in combination leads to an increased risk of death or brain impairments in over 65s” says the Guardian. […]
Continue Reading →Older people and alcohol: Royal College of Psychiatrists gets screening wrong
Much ado about the RCPsych report out today on ‘Our invisible addicts’; supposedly, older people addicted to drugs or alcohol. I don’t think this is a new concern. Part of the ‘problem’ is that the care of people with addictions has slowly got better and people are living longer. Northern Doctor has written very well […]
Continue Reading →Ovarian cancer screening is ineffective and harmful
Important paper in JAMA: ovarian cancer screening using transvaginal ultrasound and serum Ca-125 testing does not reduce mortality from ovarian cancer. Worse, there “Diagnostic evaluation following a false-positive screening test result was associated with complications”. The harms of this ineffective intervention: “Of 3285 women with false-positive results, 1080 underwent surgery (32.9% for oophorectomy) as part […]
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