Articles tagged ‘’

Wolfson Centre, Medical School, University of Birmingham.
Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd April 2010

The All-Party Parliamentary Thrombosis Group (APPTG) has recently welcomed the Department of Health’s (DH) decision to mandate venous thromboembolism (VTE) prevention in the Operating Framework for the NHS in 2010/11. The All Party Group has been campaigning for its inclusion as a key step in reducing up to 25,000 annual avoidable deaths and saving the NHS over half a billion pounds a year.

Physicians should be comfortable referring some patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) for effective stroke prevention surgery, according to a study appearing in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN) (1).

A new commissioning guide for promoting health and well-being has just been launched by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH).

In January 2010 Patient Safety First launches the first of four focus weeks as part of its campaign to help trusts eliminate avoidable death and harm to patients.


Drinking more coffee (regular or decaffeinated) or tea appears to lower the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to an analysis of previous studies reported in Archives of Internal Medicine, JAMA (1).



Forensic pathologists have shown that over three per cent of all sudden deaths in south-west Spain are related to the use of cocaine. They believe their findings can be extrapolated to much of the rest of Europe, indicating that cocaine use is a growing public health problem in Europe and that there is no such thing as “safe” recreational use of small amounts of the drug.


NICE is in the process of updating its clinical guideline on the management of chronic heart failure in adults and has now published its draft recommendations for public consultation. Since the original guideline was published in 2003, new high-quality evidence from randomised controlled trials in diagnosis, treatment and monitoring have been published. This partial update will ensure that the recommendations take into account the new evidence available.

Chronically ill patients need close monitoring of relevant health parameters. But available equipment tends to be clumsy and impractical. This doesn’t have to be so. For heart patients, for example, T-Shirts and even bed sheets can be suitable monitoring devices. In the EU-funded MyHeart project, the watchful bed sheet and other devices are currently being tested.

Urgent coordinated action is needed to avoid the thousands of preventable strokes that leave many atrial fibrillation (AF) patients mentally and physically disabled or dead, every year. A report, How Can We Avoid a Stroke Crisis?, recently launched in the European Parliament by Action for Stroke Prevention, a group of health experts from across Europe, proposes measures to tackle stroke in patients with AF, the most common, sustained abnormal heart rhythm and a major cause of stroke(1).