Schmid and colleagues have debated this issue again in the BMJ this month. International guidelines for sciatica recommend a stepped care approach starting with conservative management (ie, physiotherapy and medication), escalating to steroid injections, then surgery when non-surgical treatment has failed or when major radicular weakness is present. Unfortunately, evidence on the effectiveness […]
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Nurses are set to walk out again for 48 hours, from 8pm on Sunday, April 30th to 8pm on Tuesday, May 2nd. Union members rejected a pay deal on Friday (April 14th), sparking concerns that more strikes could be on the way. In the ballot, 61 per cent of eligible members voted, with 54 […]
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Five people in England have died from the new COVID variant dubbed Arcturus, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has confirmed. The latest technical briefing on COVID variants in England states that 105 sequenced cases of XBB.1.16 have been identified – 54 were men, 50 women, and one person whose gender was not recorded. […]
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High waits for treatment are not new. Prior to the pandemic in February 2020 there were already 4.4 million people on a waiting list for care. At the beginning of the pandemic, the combination of suspension of non-urgent services and changes to individuals’ behaviour meant that the number of people joining the waiting list […]
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The BMJ has recently noted the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) announcing a new regulatory framework. This aims to make it faster to run (and gain approval for) clinical trials in the UK (Wise, 2023). The government hopes that the changes will stem the recent (perhaps Brexit-related) decline in clinical research initiated […]
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This debate has been re-opened in the Lancet recently (Sharma, 2023). This is the basis for this blog. According to the World Obesity Federation, obesity is a chronic, relapsing, progressive disease. This view of obesity, however, is not without controversy. Pros and cons of BMI measurement The controversy of whether obesity is a […]
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What if there were a better way for technology to help patients without burning out clinicians? This has been debated in the NEJM recently (Singh et al, 2023). Clinicians’ digital work has drastically increased since COVID-19. For example, the number of messages from patients grew by 57% at the outset of the pandemic and […]
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A well thought through approach to suicide risk has been recently debated in the Lancet (Iqbal, 2023). The author comments that current suicide prediction measures are ineffective, although the assessment of suicide risk allows for a systematic approach. However, an approach called the Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS) Framework (and its guiding clinical […]
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The Lancet has recently debated the traditional approach to stroke prevention, which requires screening and stratification for risk of disease, is complex, expensive, and only modestly successful (Feigin et al, 2013). New strategies for primary and secondary prevention of stroke and cardiovascular disease, such as an effective polypill and/or aspirin, require further discussion, especially from […]
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Kaggwa et al (Lancet, 2023) has recently restarted the debate regarding Labia minora elongation (LME). This is a form of female genital mutilation (FGM) that involves the elongation of the inner lips of the female external genitalia or labia minora with the use of herbs (e.g. Solanum aculeastrum), oils, crèmes (e.g. cow-cheese), and other […]
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