In the latest Endgames picture quiz, a 41 year old man presents to the emergency department with a two week history of worsening shortness of breath, productive cough, intermittent fever, […]
South Asia
The BMJ Today: Paying people to live healthier lives and tackling climate change
This week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Fifth Assessment Report. The scientists who wrote it warn of the serious impact that climate change—unequivocally influenced by human […]
Nathan Sivagananathan: Trail—improving cancer care in Sri Lanka
In 2011 Nathan Sivagananathan and Sarinda Unamboowe set out to transform the lives of patients with cancer in the northern region of Sri Lanka. For over three decades the northern […]
The BMJ Today: Vitamin D, probiotics, and polio
We have been longing for a final word on whether vitamin D supplements improve health. An umbrella review published today included 107 systematic literature reviews and 74 meta-analyses of observational […]
The BMJ Today: Selective decontamination revisited and healthcare reform in Massachusetts
Richard Price and co-workers published a network meta analysis evaluating the effect on mortality of selective digestive decontamination (SDD), selective oropharyngeal decontamination (SOD), and topical oropharyngeal chlorhexidine in patients in […]
The BMJ Today: Debates about alternative medicine and cancer screening
People love complementary and alternative therapies, and vote with their wallets to spend close to £5 billion a year in the UK alone on treatments such as massage, relaxation, evening […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—31 March 2014
NEJM 27 Mar 2014 Vol 370 1189 I sing the body mitotic: we are a mass of cells dividing, mutating, cannibalizing, spreading. The wonder is not that we ever die […]
The BMJ Today: Einstein’s theory of data, climate change and the “threat to human survival,” and New York facing legal challenge over e-cigs ban
“Information is not knowledge,” was Einstein’s cautionary take on the power (and limitation) of data. In healthcare, the collection of patient feedback and other data is regularly hailed as the […]
Veena Rao: Wanted in India—a national programme to address malnutrition
There has been an unexpected and welcome development in the public discourse on India’s malnutrition. For the first time, the subject is a talking point in the pre-election political debates, […]
The BMJ Today: Farewell to traditional public health services and to our GP columnist
There’s a new vocabulary being used to describe the NHS in England that conjures up images of the American Frontier; of battles over territories, conquests, and survival. GP and former […]