• Cervical screening programmes often stop at around the age of 65 and focus on younger women. In their analysis article, Susan Sherman and colleagues argue that, with an ageing population, the upper age limit for cervical screening needs to reflect this. They also call for awareness campaigns to target older as well as younger women. […]
Salil Patel: Why you should know about global surgery
More people die from a lack of surgical care than from HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. Half of the world’s population face catastrophic financial expenditure due to surgery. With over 90% of people in most low and middle income countries lacking affordable, surgical care, medical students around the world are helping work towards resolving this […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Medical logos
“Grapheme” is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “The class of letters and other visual symbols that represent a phoneme or cluster of phonemes” and “in a given writing system of a given language, a feature of written expression that cannot be analysed into smaller meaningful units.” The dictionary gives an excellent example: the […]
The BMJ Today: The many problems of the research enterprise
Here’s what is new on thebmj.com today. • Selective reporting in trials of high risk cardiovascular devices Do regulators trust the medical literature as a source of unbiased knowledge? I would be surprised if they do after reading a research paper by Lee Chang and colleagues. This team of academics searched the US Food and Drug […]
Neel Sharma: We need to improve feedback to medical students
The other day I made a point of observing the number of people walking whilst using their mobile phones. I am sure we have all made a similar observation of people staring down at their phones. The vast extent of the problem has even been characterised clinically as “text neck.” I recall the days of […]
The BMJ Today: How many patients is the private sector treating for the NHS?
• Paid for by the NHS, treated privately In one of his regular data briefings, John Appleby, chief economist at the King’s Fund, looks at how much non-NHS providers contribute to NHS care. Decent data on this area is a relatively new phenomenon, he writes, but over the seven years since 2006-7 the proportion of NHS […]
Annabel Ferriman: Dis-integration of the NHS
Local services are being sacrificed on the altar of competition. Why does anyone think we can integrate health and social care when we can’t even integrate healthcare itself? This week’s case of the “unmitigated disaster” in Nottingham illustrates the point. […]
John Moxham: Smoking still kills
Smoking still kills. Today it will kill 200 people. [1] People will die from heart attacks, from cancers, from respiratory illnesses, and many other conditions. But smoking doesn’t just kill. For every person that dies today 20 more will live with their illnesses needing the care and support of the NHS, social care services, and […]
The BMJ Today: Risks of caesarean delivery, medical abortions, and sepsis in children
• Time to consider the risks of caesarean delivery for long term child health In an analysis article, Jan Blustein and Jianmeng Liu examine the evidence linking caesarean delivery with childhood chronic disease and say that guidelines on delivery should be reviewed with these risks in mind. For example, according to recent research, children delivered […]
Jocalyn Clark: Does it pay to pee? An Indian city thinks so
When in public, where to pee? This is a universal challenge with a surprising array of local solutions. Last month Tahmima Anam, in her characteristically delightful New York Times column, revealed that Dhaka, Bangladesh, a city of over 15 million, has just five functional public toilets. The abundance of outdoor labourers and the endless traffic […]