Latest BMJ News page

Latest BMJ News page

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The emperor's NICE new clothes

Spence is right: all doctors should challenge conventional wisdom to secure the best evidence based care for their patients.1 But attacking the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence...
In brief

Whooping cough cases more than doubled in 2011: The number of cases of whooping cough reported to the Health Protection Agency in England and Wales rose from 421 in 2010 to 1040 in 2011. The...
Realities of medicine in South Africa lie behind its brain drain

The often stated claims about the huge amounts of money that sub-Saharan countries spend on training doctors only to lose them to “poachers” from developed countries is misleading at best and...
Patient related factors are also important in treating gout

The treatment of gout remains suboptimal—only 30% of primary care patients take urate lowering drugs.1 Lipworth and colleagues note that important reasons for this underuse include drug toxicity and...
Root causes of doctors' dissatisfaction must be tackled to stop brain drain

Perhaps understandably in a study dealing with numbers and dollars, Mills and colleagues do not consider the reasons for doctors leaving the former colonies of sub-Saharan Africa.1Many such doctors...
Keep it small and personal in any reconfiguration of healthcare providers

Smallwood calls for rationalisation of providers within the NHS and specifically the development of large polyclinics for primary care.1 After 35 years as a general practitioner and latterly several...
Why not switch to movie-style credits for research papers?

Movie-style credits could solve the longstanding problem of honorary and ghost authorship in high impact biomedical journals.1The research group lead would be the producer and the principal...
Let's simply scrap authorship and move to contributorship

Why do science journals stick to authorship rather than moving wholesale to contributorship?1These days science is rarely undertaken by individuals. Most research is conducted by teams, often large...
Authors' reply to Ellis and Yates

Ellis and Yates highlight the recommendations on risk scales.1 2 3 A central question is whether healthcare professionals should be able to accurately predict adverse outcomes after self harm. The...
Life goes on for patients with cancer, as they desire

Joshi’s statement: “Adam goes clubbing, something most patients undergoing chemotherapy would not be capable of” is surprising in a review that also mentions how many patients with cancer do not want...
Is a clinician's "gut feeling" enough to identify self harm?

The guidelines summary recommends against using risk assessment tools to predict future self harm or suicide.1 Although evidence suggests these scales are poor predictors of risk,1 can we simply rely...
Difficulties in managing young people who self harm

Junior psychiatry doctors on-call often have to assess and manage young people who have self harmed. National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines suggest following the same...
US publishes first global health strategy to improve health of Americans and rest of the world

The US Department of Health and Human Services has published its first ever global health strategy, recognising the fact that the health of its citizens is more closely linked to the health of people...
Wakefield sues BMJ over MMR articles

Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who was struck off the UK medical register after triggering a worldwide health scare by linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism, has launched a...
Appeal court will rule on children's heart surgery at London's Royal Brompton Hospital

The legal battle by the Royal Brompton Hospital in London to stop the closure of its children’s heart surgery unit is heading for the Court of Appeal after the body recommending closure won the right...
Doctors are told to "make every contact count" to reduce costs of poor lifestyles

Doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals in England will be asked to question patients about their lifestyle, including smoking, diet, exercise, and alcohol consumption, at every meeting,...
Drug industry is now biggest defrauder of US government

Stephen Whitehead, the new head of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, thinks that the bad press given to the drug industry is largely undeserved.1 A paragraph heading calls for...
Time to act on nonsensical outpatient follow-up ratio targets

A year ago I wrote about imposed targets for outpatient new:follow-up ratios and their impact on chronic disease management,1 receiving many supportive comments in both medical circles and the lay...
Doctor begins "Bevan's Run" to stop the health bill

bmj;344/jan10_3/d8320/FIG1F1fig1Clive Peedell, a consultant oncologist and leading opponent of the government’s Health and Social Care Bill, set off on Tuesday 10 January to run from Cardiff to...
Haiti's cholera outbreak provides important lessons for global health

A study into how a disease previously unknown in Haiti eventually led to the world’s worst cholera epidemic offers valuable lessons for global health, say researchers from the US charity Partners in...
Show us the data: why clinical outcomes matter

Data from the NHS will have a key role in the British government’s plan for national economic recovery. In a well trailed speech last month, Prime Minister David Cameron announced a plan to amend the...
Higher senior staffing levels at weekends and reduced mortality

Dr Foster Intelligence recently published a report that shows a clear association between reduced numbers of senior doctors in hospitals in the United Kingdom and increased mortality at the weekend.1...
US advisory panellists on drug's safety had ties to manufacturers

At least four members of a key committee advising the US Food and Drug Administration on the safety of a top selling drug have had financial ties to its manufacturers, raising questions about the...
Tribal violence worsens humanitarian crisis in South Sudan

Six months after independence, the world’s newest nation is struggling to cope with a mounting refugee crisis, massive population displacement, and the dislocation of health services and relief...
Clinical negligence claims against plastic surgeons rise "significantly"

Growing numbers of patients are launching compensation claims against plastic surgeons in private practice over operations that have gone wrong or failed to achieve the desired result, says the...
Vitamin A supplementation in children and hearing loss

For most clinicians, vitamin A is first and foremost associated with eye disease. Vitamin A deficiency causes a range of ocular manifestations including xerophthalmia, night blindness, Bitot’s spots,...
Are you normal?

By the time you reach the small gallery within the Hunterian Museum, where this temporary exhibition is housed, you’ve passed the skeleton of a seven foot Irish giant (see BMJ 2011;343:d7597,...
Vitamin A supplementation in preschool children and risk of hearing loss as adolescents and young adults in rural Nepal: randomised trial cohort follow-up study

Objective To determine whether vitamin A supplementation administered in the preschool years can lower the risk of hearing loss in adolescence and adulthood.Design Follow-up study of adolescents and...
Nine in 10 Chinese are covered by medical insurance, but access to treatment remains a problem

China’s wide ranging reforms of the health sector have resulted in almost universal coverage by social health insurance schemes and a greater degree of medical security, conclude reports from...
Government puts pressure on private sector to pay for removal of PIP breast implants

The UK government has announced that women who received a particular type of breast implant from France through the NHS should be able to have them removed at no personal cost.Private clinics are...
Risks of aspirin outweigh benefits in people without cardiovascular disease, shows analysis

Prophylactic aspirin reduces the risk of non-fatal myocardial infarction in people without cardiovascular disease but does not reduce cardiovascular or cancer mortality, and any benefit is offset by...
The effect of combination treatment with aliskiren and blockers of the renin-angiotensin system on hyperkalaemia and acute kidney injury: systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective To examine the safety of using aliskiren combined with agents used to block the renin-angiotensin system.Design Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.Data...
Transformative mutation specific pharmacotherapy for cystic fibrosis

Ever since the discovery of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator gene (CFTR) in 1989 explained the genetics and pathophysiology of cystic fibrosis,1 healthcare providers, patients,...
Exercise boosts immunity--up to a point

Regular moderate exercise can reduce the risk of falling prey to upper respiratory tract infections, says Mike Gleason, professor of exercise biochemistry at the University of Loughborough. But don’t...
MPs call for review of alcohol guidelines

A national review of guidelines is needed to reassess the safety of alcohol consumption and to find better ways of getting the message about safe drinking levels across to the public, MPs have...
Short term outcomes of prostate biopsy in men tested for cancer by prostate specific antigen: prospective evaluation within ProtecT study

Objectives To measure the effect of the adverse events within 35 days of transrectal ultrasound guided biopsy from the perspective of asymptomatic men having prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing;...
Optimising prostate biopsy

In the linked study (doi:10.1136/bmj.d7894), Rosario and colleagues assess the effects of transrectal ultrasound guided prostate biopsy in primary and secondary healthcare on patient reported...
A restless night's sleep

A 76 year old woman presented to her general practitioner with a four year history of uncomfortable sensations in her legs like “swarms of biting and crawling ants.” These would occur in the evenings...
MPs warn government over wasting aid money in fragile states

MPs have commended the UK government for donating money to countries emerging from years of conflict but have warned that ministers must reduce the cost of delivering aid programmes.MPs on the select...
Ignoring evidence has led to ineffective drug policies, shows research

National drug control initiatives often lack an evidence base, while existing international treaties have done little to prevent drug misuse, say experts in a series of studies published in the...
Doctors' views will be sought on direction of new IT strategy

The Department of Health for England wants doctors to be more active in determining how information technology is used in the NHS in the future.Later this year the department is due to publish its...