In 2010, Paolo Macchiarini, an Italian doctor and researcher, was recruited as a guest professor to the Karolinska Institute, and as a surgeon to the Karolinska University Hospital. In 2008, Macchiarini performed the first transplant of a trachea from a dead donor. Prior to the transplant, the trachea was prepared with stem cells. Between 2011 […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—19 September 2016
NEJM 15 Sep 2016 Vol 375 Preherpetic vaccines in the old For most people who get shingles, the rash and discomfort last for a couple of weeks and then gradually remit. The point of a shingles vaccine is to prevent post-herpetic neuralgia, an uncommon, unremitting condition which can blight people’s lives. Age increases both your […]
Marta Balinska: Psychological distress versus mental illness
“You will know very few happy moments in life, so make the most of them.” Those are words I often heard from my late mother, leading me to believe that life was going to be a painful affair. In retrospect, I wonder whether she was dealing with chronic depression or whether she was “merely” dogged […]
Tessa Richards: WHO and the politics of health
Gaining cross country consensus on joint European strategies to tackle politically and culturally sensitive public health issues is not easy. So it was not surprising perhaps that a decision to adopt an action plan on sexual and reproductive health at the World Health Organization’s 66th Regional Committee meeting in Copenhagen went to the wire. It […]
Jeanne Lenzer: Donald Trump on Dr Oz—the greatest non-evidence based show on earth
Late night comics will love Donald Trump’s latest act of showmanship: the neatly choreographed moment when he pulled out his “medical record” from his jacket pocket on The Dr Oz Show last night. The show and this big reveal garnered plenty of headlines: now everyone knows that Mr Trump is overweight, verging on obese; that […]
William Cayley: Systems wisdom
In a recent BMJ blog Steve Ruffenach made some excellent points on the importance of balancing “accept” and “except” in approaching “Tech” in medicine. However, as we continue to feel the pressure of realizing “meaningful use” of electronic medical records (often with attendant requirements for documentation, reporting, and ad-nauseam clicks of different buttons in each patient’s chart), I’ve […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Lecturing
A lecture of the type that I am used to giving is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “a discourse given before an audience upon a given subject, usually for the purpose of instruction”, although I always keep in mind the BBC’s mission statement, originally formulated by John Reith, their first Director–General, “to inform, […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: From cast iron to concrete
In the last blog, I looked at cast iron as a metaphor for strong. You could say that concrete was analogous as a metaphor for real: we want concrete evidence, not just something glimpsed in passing, or some vague speculation. I found over 300 papers in PubMed that presented concrete evidence: “…no concrete evidence demonstrating […]
Soham D Bhaduri: How we can improve the specialty status of family medicine in India
A few weeks ago I was interviewing Dr Ashoka Prasad, a psychiatrist and campaigner for improving the rights of those with mental illness, for a popular Indian medical news portal, and was grabbed by a point that he made. The interview was mainly about the state of mental healthcare in India, yet Prasad stressed the […]
Steve Ruffenach on accepting technology in medicine
Like every other profession, medicine has been radically changed by our friend Tech. You of course know Tech; he is that associate that is always around, always snooping where he doesn’t belong. He’s the one who won’t leave you alone no matter where you are or what you are doing. His virtues and failings have […]