I used to dream about being a nurse. There was me, in my nice little fantasy world, dressed in lilac with a frilly lace cap taking pulses and chatting to kindly patients all day. Oh how different is the reality! On day one as a student nurse on the wards, I was thrown straight into […]
An advance in survival of surgical patients is coming from a better understanding of vitamin D. Many doctors have been sceptical, but the benefits of vitamin D are now clearly evident, showing that sun-lovers and health enthusiasts have been ahead of professionals on this issue. Meanwhile dermatologists are hiding their faces in shame since they […]
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The latest issue of Cancer World, the bi-monthly magazine published by the European School of Oncology, features a ‘sting’ carried out by German journalists highlighting the misguided or even dangerous advice given to cancer patients by alternative healers. There is an assumption, often mentioned in the media, that many patients spurn conventional surgery and medicine […]
When Abdel Malek was brought into the emergency room in Aleppo in September 2014, his lower left leg was so badly damaged by fragments from a barrel bomb attack that the Syrian doctors thought they would have to amputate the little boy’s foot. The doctors that remain in Aleppo are passionate and committed but did […]
Today three million woman in the UK are diagnosed with so-called brittle bone disease osteoporosis and 75,000 hip fractures are treated every year – eight of ten affecting women. Research published in the journal, BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders in 2010 shows that although the incidence of fractures appears to have risen since the 1960s, this is […]
Monday Theme: Letting go of fear and doubt We can be very scared of change and the first chakra is all about change, about losing our rigidity and learning to be more flexible. Fear is something we all have. It is part of being alive, and of knowing that some day all of us will […]
The Library of the Royal College of Surgeons was packed to the rafters on Wednesday night for the launch of the charity founded by war surgeon David Nott. The David Nott Foundation will train surgeons in the skills they need to operate in war zones where there is little equipment and conditions are hazardous. Among those gathering in the […]
Last week David Cahill, Professor in Reproductive Medicine and Medical Education at the University of Bristol’s School of Clinical Sciences and gynaecologist in St Michael’s Hospital, was called upon to perform an emergency caesarean section on Kera, a Western Lowland Gorilla at Bristol Zoo Gardens. Despite having delivered hundreds of babies by caesarean in his career, […]
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Many of us travel by air. In 2013 alone, more than 3.1 billion passengers were carried, world-wide, in scheduled, mainly jet turbine aircraft. Of these flights, 840 million originated in Europe and 850 million in the USA. These figures do not include non-scheduled passenger (IT – inclusive tour) operations, commuter, air-taxi and general aviation activity; […]
Walk down Shanghai’s bustling Nanjing Road, the Chinese metropolis’s Oxford Street, and something is clear: the country’s near 1.4 billion people are older, wealthier and larger than they used to be. As waste-bands widen and deeper pockets fund more lavish lifestyles, the country is facing a boom in numbers of patients with chronic illness – […]
Read More… from From Insulin to Ginseng: Treating China’s diabetes time-bomb