Getty ImagesThere are 1,594 people in Welsh hospitals who are fit to leave but remain there because of care or assessment delays, figures for the last year show.

PAChancellor Rachel Reeves’s decision to scrap planned changes to the care system in England has been described as a “tragedy” by Sir Andrew Dilnot, the man who authored the proposals in 2011.

PA MediaThe government and the BMA trade union are expected to confirm they have struck an improved pay deal for junior doctors in England worth 22% on average over two years.

A ban on puberty blockers introduced by the previous government using emergency legislation was lawful, the High Court has ruled.

While not a perfect alternative to colonoscopies or fecal tests, experts hope the test could lead to more people getting screened for colorectal cancers.The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a new screening test for colorectal cancer. It requires only a sample of blood and can find cancers when they are early stage and usually curable.For many people, a routine blood test is easier to get than a colonoscopy or a fecal sample test. But the blood test, made by Guardant Health of Palo Alto, Calif., comes with a limitation. Unlike other screening tests for colon and rectal cancers, it has a poor record of finding precancerous growths. Removal of those growths can prevent cancer.The test, named Shield, will be available within a week. Guardant will announce its list price at that time, said Matt Burns, a company spokesman. It is approved for people aged 45 and over who are at average risk for colon cancer.The hope is that the blood test, despite its limitation, can encourage more people to be screened for colorectal cancer, the second-most common cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. As many as 53,000 Americans are expected to die from colorectal cancer this year.Regular screening can prevent as many as 73 percent of those deaths. But although current guidelines recommend screenings starting at age 45, as many as 25 to 50 percent of people who should be getting screened are not.The problem is convincing more people to be screened. That is where the new test comes in. It is simple for patients — the blood sample can be obtained at a doctor’s office as part of a routine physical exam, or at a commercial lab.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Yellow heat health warnings have been issued across much of England with forecasts saying temperatures may climb to as high as 32C (90F) on Tuesday.

Electric vehicles cost more to buy than gasoline cars, and they may lose value more quickly. Even for people eager to own a car with no tailpipe emissions, it’s reasonable to wonder whether it makes sense to buy one now.The answer may well be yes, but there are a lot of factors to consider, many of which depend on your driving habits and how important it is to you to reduce your impact on the environment. And because electric vehicles are a new technology, there is less certainty than for gasoline-powered vehicles about how the numbers will shake out over time.Here’s what we know.Is battery longevity a problem?Most electric cars haven’t been on the road that long, so it’s hard to say definitively how long batteries will remain usable. Lithium-ion batteries, the kind used in virtually all electric vehicles, do lose range over time.But the degradation is very slow. Electric cars from Tesla and other automakers have software that does a good job of protecting batteries from excess heat or voltage that can cause damage, especially when charging.Federal regulations require automakers to guarantee electric vehicle batteries for eight years or 100,000 miles, though manufacturers interpret that rule in different ways. Most will replace a battery if it loses more than 30 percent of its capacity during the warranty period.One thing to note: Batteries will still work in freezing weather and extreme heat, but their range could be temporarily reduced.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

In a new report, the American Academy of Pediatrics said that breastfeeding problems were rarely caused by infant tongue-ties.In recent years, more and more women struggling to breastfeed have taken their babies to a dentist to sever the tissue under the tongue.But little evidence supports the use of these “tongue-tie releases” for most babies, according to a report published on Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents 67,000 doctors. The tongue procedures, which often cost several hundred dollars, should be done only to the small fraction of infants with severely tethered tongues, the report said.“Our patients are paying out-of-pocket, outrageous amounts for something they don’t need,” said Dr. Jennifer Thomas, a pediatrician in Wisconsin who oversees the academy’s breastfeeding group and was the lead author of the report.Dr. Thomas said she and her colleagues began working on the report nearly nine years ago when they noticed a significant uptick in parents asking them to check their infants for tongue-ties. One study estimated an 800 percent rise in the number of tongue-tie procedures between 1997 and 2012.A New York Times investigation last year found that some dentists and lactation consultants aggressively promoted the surgery, despite a risk of side effects. Serious complications are rare. But doctors told The Times that they had seen the cuts cause such pain that babies had refused to eat, becoming dehydrated and malnourished. A few said that newly floppy tongues blocked infants’ airways.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

FamilyThe mother of a young boy with complex needs has called for all special schools to have CCTV after her son was attacked by a teaching assistant.

It was much more accurate than primary care doctors using cognitive tests and CT scans. The findings could speed the quest for an affordable and accessible way to diagnose patients with memory problems.Scientists have made another major stride toward the long-sought goal of diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease with a simple blood test. On Sunday, a team of researchers reported that a blood test was significantly more accurate than doctors’ interpretation of cognitive tests and CT scans in signaling the condition.The study, published Sunday in the journal JAMA, found that about 90 percent of the time the blood test correctly identified whether patients with memory problems had Alzheimer’s. Dementia specialists using standard methods that did not include expensive PET scans or invasive spinal taps were accurate 73 percent of the time, while primary care doctors using those methods got it right only 61 percent of the time.“Not too long ago measuring pathology in the brain of a living human was considered just impossible,” said Dr. Jason Karlawish, a co-director of the Penn Memory Center at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the research. “This study adds to the revolution that has occurred in our ability to measure what’s going on in the brain of living humans.”The results, presented Sunday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Philadelphia, are the latest milestone in the search for affordable and accessible ways to diagnose Alzheimer’s, a disease that afflicts nearly seven million Americans and over 32 million people worldwide. Medical experts say the findings bring the field closer to a day when people might receive routine blood tests for cognitive impairment as part of primary care checkups, similar to the way they receive cholesterol tests.“Now, we screen people with mammograms and PSA or prostate exams and other things to look for very early signs of cancer,” said Dr. Adam Boxer, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study. “And I think we’re going to be doing the same thing for Alzheimer’s disease and hopefully other forms of neurodegeneration.”In recent years, several blood tests have been developed for Alzheimer’s. They are currently used mostly to screen participants in clinical trials and by some specialists like Dr. Boxer to help pinpoint if a patient’s dementia is caused by Alzheimer’s or another condition.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.