All the hassling and waiting came to an abrupt end. My New Zealand Medical Council registration came through and I had a work visa within the hour. I fly tomorrow and look forward to reporting back from the other side.
Tips for jetlag welcome.
Whatever the merits of Burns’ verse, I think that its main purpose nowadays is to help Scots annoy the English. On these occasions of national display I try to exempt myself on the grounds that though I was born in England my parents were Polish and a lot of their friends were Scottish. But if you want to read Scots poetry for pleasure, go to Robert Henryson. (more…)
We’ve known for some time that about a quarter of patients in hospital with coronary artery disease are depressed, and that this worsens their prognosis – hence those questions we are supposed to ask patients when they come to our CHD clinics. (more…)
The unnamed hero of this editorial on permanent ventricular assist devices in the UK is Peter Houghton, who, more than six years ago, was dying of heart failure. Stephen Westaby wanted to fit him with the then-experimental Jarvik 2000 LAD, and Philip Poole-Wilson was sent in to explain to him that it might not work. (more…)
“Intravenous alteplase is safe and effective in routine clinical use when given within 3h of stroke onset
A review that looks at randomised controlled trials comparing oral anticoagulation with and without added aspirin in various clinical contexts. In all of them except patients with mechanical heart valves, there is little evidence of clinical benefit and lots of extra bleeding. Here’s a paper which combines two QOF areas which have caused much exasperation to British GPs struggling to get home in the evening with their bags of money: eGFR and fracture risk. (more…)
I’m still here. It’s a fiasco. Instead of smugly blogging from summertime Auckland, I’m feeling slightly bitter in bitter-cold London. All warm clothes are packed. I’d hoped the NZ Medical Council registration would have arrived, but alas, I’m still waiting. In my quest to career around this week, I’ve learned two lessons. (more…)
Even when it is localised and resectable, cancer of the pancreas is almost always lethal. This German trial of post-operative gemcitabine has been going on since 1998 and has proved that this type of chemotherapy prolongs disease-free survival by a worthwhile amount, though in the final analysis patients given the treatment survived a median 22 months compared with 20.5 months for the control group. (more…)
Another paper about gene signatures in cancer cells: a couple of weeks ago it was in non-small-cell lung cancer, and here it’s in breast cancer. This expensive new form of prognostic stratification has yet to work its way into studies of clinical relevance. (more…)
