Researchers have calculated that billions of dollars could be saved if all eye doctors in the United States used the less expensive option of two drugs (bevacizumab and ranibizumab), which are commonly used to treat neovascular age related macular degeneration and diabetic macular oedema. The conditions affect more than two million Americans, yet only one […]
Category: The BMJ today
The BMJ Today: Health challenges across the divide
Overdiagnosis and over-treatment of malaria is a major problem in South and central Asia, where malaria is a minority cause of febrile illness, and primary health centres often rely on clinical symptoms for a diagnosis. Researchers from London and Afghanistan conducted a patient randomised study in a primary care setting in two areas where malaria […]
The BMJ Today: Candy Crush Saga, health warnings, and WHO’s financial woes
I’m a bit of an Apple lover. Not the fruit, but the company, although the odd golden delicious has been known to make an appearance in the fruit bowl. The millions of apps and games available across their products can be invaluable for everything from finding your way to the nearest free water facility (GiveMeTap), […]
The BMJ Today: Doom and gloom in the UK and Australia
Each Tuesday at our morning meeting, we suggest ideas for the print journal’s “picture of the week” before it goes to press. If today was a Tuesday, I would propose this image (copied below) by GP David Shepherd, which was submitted as a rapid response yesterday to Margaret McCartney’s article, How to undermine general practice. “Our […]
The BMJ Today: Return of the Patient’s Journey and a history lesson from Richard Lehman
Two years ago, GP Michael Frank Harris discovered a right inguinal swelling while looking in his bathroom mirror. He writes about what happened next in the return of our Patient’s Journey series. Harris surprised his haematologist with an alternative diagnosis and together they took a leap of faith—deciding on treatment for stage I follicular lymphoma, […]
The BMJ Today: Is EBM broken? Then how about a nice cuppa
Is evidence based medicine broken? That’s the question that Greenhalgh et al are asking in this Analysis article. From inside The BMJ, with our attempts to shed light on unpublished data, it’s easy to become jaded about the whole medical-industrial complex, and say that yes, it is. But recently, while editing some videos collected as […]
The BMJ Today: The rising tide of obesity
Obesity rates are rising worldwide. According to the CDC, in the US, there has been a dramatic increase in obesity over the past 20 years. A similar phenomenon has been observed in other countries. Obesity related conditions (heart disease, stroke, diabetes, hypertension) are also increasing: around a third of adults in England now have prediabetes, and […]
The BMJ Today: The World Cup—a win for the alcohol industry?
Today the world’s attention will be focused on the vibrant city of Sao Paulo in Brazil, where the host nation will kick off one of the biggest sporting events in the world in a showdown against Croatia. You may not know that BMJ has had its eye on Brazil for quite some time, and has an […]
The BMJ Today: On with the patient revolution
Can partnership with patients be improved to the benefit of healthcare? We think so, and today we launch a strategy to help make it happen. It’s a delivery on a promise made last year, developed with the help of our international panel. We’ll be including more on, and from, patients throughout the journal—in Research, Analysis […]
The BMJ Today: Lifestyle counselling and screening—great expectations and false hopes
The underlying concept of screening is that an early detection of risk factors or disease is beneficial for the clinical or public health outcome. Patients, physicians, and public health authorities have had high expectations for this concept. Unfortunately, some of the hopes for screening have turned out to be false hopes after critical, scientific assessment. Lifestyle medicine […]