Venous ulcers, which are more common in the elderly, should be treated with varicose surgery soon after they occur, according to new research. Delaying until the wound has healed – which is the standard treatment – is less effective. The research, led by Imperial College London and funded by the National Institute for Health Research, […]
Latest research suggests we are going through a sleep deprivation epidemic and we are getting between one to two hours less sleep than we were getting 60 years ago. On average adults need around 7-9 hours sleep each night while children need 9-13 hours sleep. However, although insomnia – that is characterised by difficulty falling […]
It’s just common sense that doctors who have empathy make better doctors. However, until now, the benefit to patients has not been quantified, which makes it difficult for doctors and quality controllers to put a value on being nice. For our research paper, which is published in the latest issue of the Journal of the […]
NICE guidelines published last year recommended that all bowel cancer patients should be tested at diagnosis for signs of Lynch syndrome but we know that this isn’t happening in eight out of 10 NHS hospitals in England. It’s absolutely vital that these guidelines are followed because Lynch syndrome, which is an inherited condition, can increase […]
There has been a lot said about foreign IVF clinics and ‘false hope’ in recent days. You may have seen headlines screaming that ‘vulnerable’ couples ‘desperate’ to a have a baby are being ‘enticed’ by overseas IVF clinics. The clinics, it was claimed, had inflated their own success rates in a bid to make them look […]
“Night owls” – people who like to stay up late and have trouble dragging themselves out of bed in the morning – have a higher risk of dying sooner than “larks,” people who have a natural preference for going to bed early and rise with the sun, according to a new study from the University […]
When it comes to gender reconstructive surgery, if you could sum-up the patient experience in one word, chances are you’d use ‘waiting’. The patient may have known from their early teens they weren’t comfortable in their own skin, yet they were forced to wait until they could do anything about it. If they initially sought help […]
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Researchers have moved a step closer to understanding eating disorders – a move which could ultimately lead to better diagnosis and treatment of the conditions. It is estimated the NHS spends around £1.6 billion a year on eating disorders, but despite these efforts anorexia nervosa has the highest death rate of all psychiatric conditions, with […]
The conventional therapeutic approach to dealing with a problem like depression is to wait for the problem to set in and then give you a drug to stop you feeling depressed. GPs often have less than 15 minutes for a single appointment so they just don’t have the time to ask a patient about the […]
More than eight out of 10 NHS hospitals in England are not following the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines to test all bowel cancer patients at the time of their diagnosis for Lynch syndrome, with a mere 22 hospitals (17%) following the guidelines. A freedom of Information request submitted by Bowel […]
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