Publisher Health

Published15 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Jenny ReesBBC Wales health correspondent Consultant and specialist doctors in Wales have voted in favour of strike action in a dispute over pay.The industrial action takes place from 7am on 16 April until 7am on 18 April.They will walk out over workplace conditions caused by extreme pressures, and unsafe staffing levels, the British Medical Association (BMA) said.Figures suggest these two groups of doctors make up 54% of the hospital-based medical workforce, though not all are union members.The Welsh government said it agreed “with the principle of pay restoration” but is unable to offer it until the UK government passes “on the funding necessary for full and fair pay rises for public sector workers”.The BMA said Christmas Day cover will be provided over the 48-hour strike, to ensure emergency care, but all elective or non-emergency work will be postponed.The decision followed a Welsh government offer of 5%, though the BMA said for SAS doctors (specialist, associate specialist and specialty) on more recent contracts, the offer was as low as 2.5%.Stephen Kelly, chair of the BMA’s consultants committee in Wales, said: “No doctor wants to strike, but the conditions now faced in the workplace caused by the extreme pressures on the service and unsafe staffing levels have left doctors with no choice.   Thousands of junior doctors begin 72-hour strikeThousands of appointments hit by doctor walkoutNHS head warns of junior doctors strike disruption”Fewer doctors now want to develop their careers in Wales with some health boards reporting vacancy rates of over third for senior doctor posts.  “Colleagues are now choosing to retire early, reduce their hours or move out of Wales where pay is competitive, and wards better staffed.” This action is separate to the industrial action also under way by junior doctors in Wales, who are also members of the BMA.Their third period of strike action is set to take place over four days from 25-28 March.Julie Jones, deputy chair of the BMA’s SAS doctors’ committee in Wales, said doctors are burning out from covering significant gaps in the workforce and patient safety is at risk. “People are waiting for treatment for longer than ever before, resulting in poorer outcomes and more time in the hospital and we all deserve better.”This result represents a profession that is not ready to give up on the NHS and its patients in Wales”.The Welsh government said without additional funding it could not offer more than the 5% increase for 2023-24.”We remain committed to working in social partnership with the British Medical Association and are available for further talks at any stage,” it said. “We will work with the NHS, unions and partners to ensure life-saving and life-maintaining care is provided during the industrial action, and patient safety is maintained.”More on this storyThousands of junior doctors begin 72-hour strikePublished21 FebruaryNHS head warns of junior doctors strike disruptionPublished2 JanuaryThousands of appointments hit by doctor walkoutPublished27 December 2023

New criteria could lead to a dementia diagnosis on the basis of a simple blood test, even in the absence of obvious symptoms. Determining whether someone has Alzheimer’s disease usually requires an extended diagnostic process. A doctor takes a patient’s medical history, discusses symptoms, administers verbal and visual cognitive tests.The patient may undergo a PET scan, an M.R.I. or a spinal tap — tests that detect the presence of two proteins in the brain, amyloid plaques and tau tangles, both associated with Alzheimer’s.All of that could change dramatically if new criteria proposed by an Alzheimer’s Association working group are widely adopted.Its final recommendations, expected later this year, will accelerate a shift that is already underway: from defining the disease by symptoms and behavior to defining it purely biologically — with biomarkers, substances in the body that indicate disease.The draft guidelines, Revised Criteria for Diagnosis and Staging of Alzheimer’s Disease, call for a simpler approach. That could mean a blood test to indicate the presence of amyloid. Such tests are already available in some clinics and doctors’ offices.“Someone who has biomarker evidence of amyloid in the brain has the disease, whether they’re symptomatic or not,” said Dr. Clifford R. Jack Jr., the chair of the working group and an Alzheimer’s researcher at the Mayo Clinic.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.

The NewsJessica Kourkounis for The New York TimesAccording to new research, “technoference” is real.Toddlers who are exposed to more screen time have fewer conversations with their parents or caregivers by an array of measures. They say less, hear less and have fewer back-and-forth exchanges with adults compared with children who spend less time in front of screens.Those findings, published on Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, make up one of the first sets of longitudinal evidence to confirm an intuitive reality: Screens are not just linked to higher rates of obesity, depression and hyperactivity among children; they also curb face-to-face interactions at home — with long-term implications that could be worrisome.Some Background: What interrupts household chatter?Researchers have long known that growing up in a language-rich environment is vital for early language development. More language exposure early in life is associated with social development, higher I.Q.s and even better brain function.Given the value of such exposure, researchers in Australia were eager to investigate potential factors within the home environment that could be interrupting opportunities for parents to interact verbally with their children. Previous studies on the impact of technology mostly examined a parent’s use of a mobile device, rather than a child’s use of screens, and relied on self-reported measures of screen time rather than automated monitoring.What Researchers Found: Every minute counts.The new study, led by Mary E. Brushe, a researcher at the Telethon Kids Institute at the University of Western Australia, gathered data from 220 families across South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland with children who were born in 2017. Once every six months until they turned 3, the children wore T-shirts or vests that held small digital language processors that automatically tracked their exposure to certain types of electronic noise as well as language spoken by the child, the parent or another adult.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.

Now that federal pandemic-era funds are shrinking, states like Indiana are ending or curtailing programs that finance home care by relatives of seriously ill children and adults. Kacey Poynter doesn’t have to commute far to clock in for work. She’s a paid caregiver and simply rolls out of bed to tend to her charge: her 2-year-old son, who sleeps in a portable playpen right beside her.Sonny was born with a congenital malformation that impaired his brain development and needs near continuous care simply to breathe and eat. Ms. Poynter left her job at a call center when she brought him home from the hospital and has nursed him ever since rather than relying on aides or institutions. Indiana’s Medicaid program has paid her for this labor of love.“It’s just been honestly life-changing, being able to be here with him and not worry about someone else trying to take care of him,” she said.But her ability to keep looking after him is now in doubt. Indiana’s social services agency has announced plans to end the caregiver program, citing a nearly $1 billion shortfall in the state Medicaid budget. By July 1, parents and guardians caring for children and spouses caring for their partners would have to enroll in a different program for far less pay.The fear, for people like Ms. Poynter, is that they will have no option but to return to work and search for home care help in the midst of a deepening national labor shortage of aides and nurses.During the coronavirus pandemic, states received a huge infusion of federal money — money that’s now drying up, leaving Indiana, and many other states, facing tough choices about how to plug the gaping holes in their budgets.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.

A devastating diagnosis prompted a reporter to revisit his past — and repair its mistakes.“This disease is incurable, it’s terminal, and it will eventually kill you. Tell your children, tell your family, they need to know the truth.”Dr. Phil Stieg’s verdict came after my brain surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. He’d extracted a lime-size mass from my right parietal lobe — glioblastoma, a malignant, incurable grade 4 brain cancer, known as G.B.M.I had about 15 months to live, he told me, maybe a bit more with good treatment. It was July 2019.Death was not alien to me. I had spent my career facing it down, my own and others, as an international correspondent for The New York Times and elsewhere. I’d covered wars from Cambodia in 1978 on through Iraq and Afghanistan, and I’d seen my share of carnage.But, if I’m honest, I never thought I’d die myself. And I didn’t.What actually happened was even stranger.In fact, the day of the surgery was the first day of what I’ve come to think of as my Second Life.•The French neuroscientist David Servan-Schreiber, who survived 18 years with brain cancer, is one of many philosophers of cancer who speak of the phenomenon of the Second Life. Faced with a terminal diagnosis, patients realize that a new vista has just opened up. It is one of doctors, impairment and uncertainty, to be sure, but also one of surprising beauties and benefits.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.

Published2 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Ross CunliffeBy Alex PopeBBC News, BedfordshireA man has hailed the release of a cancer drug on the NHS, revealing it has given him an improved quality of life.Ross Cunliffe, 65, from Woburn, Bedfordshire, was told in 2013 he had the rare condition, AL amyloidosis.He secured daratumumab privately in 2019, and said making it available on the NHS was “the right thing” to do.The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) said it would benefit about 450 people a year.Image source, Ross CunliffeMr Cunliffe had campaigned with blood cancer charity Myeloma UK for the drug to be made available for everyone.The account director said being able to access daratumumab made him feel “guilty”, but as soon as he took it made a “remarkable difference to my condition”. “I have tried to help raise the message about daratumumab simply by doing articles and talking to people and writing to my MP, because of the principle of the unfairness that I could get these drugs,” he said.”I’m a great believer in there’s always a right thing and a wrong thing [to do]. Sometimes it’s not easy to do the right thing but… in this instance, the right thing has been done.”Image source, Ross CunliffeThe keen athlete, who also has stage four lung cancer and the blood cancer myeloma, said that while he was on the drug for two years it “suppressed my condition” and he was “well for pretty much that whole time”.It allowed him to snowboard, cycle – and spend time with his children and grandchildren, he said. What is AL amyloidosis?”Amyloidosis” is a general term used for a group of conditions where an abnormal protein, called amyloid, accumulates in the tissuesAL amyloidosis is a rare condition that is caused by abnormal plasma cells in the bone marrowBetween 500 and 600 patients are diagnosed in the UK each yearIt can be treated – but it is a relapsing-remitting condition15% of myeloma patients also have AL amyloidosisSource: Myeloma UKImage source, Ross CunliffeNice said the drug cost £4,320 for a 1,800mg per 15ml vial and, along with bortezomib, cyclophosphamide and dexamethasone, was recommended as an option for treating newly diagnosed AL amyloidosis in adults.Dr Sophie Castell, chief executive of Myeloma UK, said it was “tremendous news”. She added: “This new drug combination is a game-changer and we know it can have a significant impact on people’s quality of life and remission times.”Mr Cunliffe said: “The nature of my condition is the drugs I’m on will eventually stop working. I’m incurable, but if it had not been for daratumumab I wouldn’t have survived those years. “I’ve been lucky enough to do a thousand things with my life. “It’s been full of adventure and the drug allowed me to feel well enough to start doing some of those things again.”Follow East of England news on Facebook, Instagram and X. Got a story? Email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp 0800 169 1830More on this storyWoman in remission urges others to try drug trialsPublished14 August 2023Man almost paralysed by undiagnosed blood cancerPublished26 June 2023Man given year to live cancer-free after drug trialPublished30 December 2022Related Internet LinksMyeloma UKNational Institute for Health and Care ExcellenceThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Published3 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Martin WildBy Mairead Smyth & Ewan GawneBBC NewsA 73-year-old patient has said he was neglected at an NHS hospital and left to cry for help in “excruciating pain” during an ordeal that lasted months.Martin Wild was admitted to Salford Royal last year due to a spinal infection and claims he was denied pain relief and left lying in his own urine.Consultant Glyn Smurthwaite said Martin was “the most neglected acute patient I have ever seen”.The trust that runs the hospital has apologised for failings in his care.Image source, Martin WildMr Wild came home from Salford Royal Hospital in January after an eight-month stay because of an infection following a private spinal operation.He said he was forced to phone 999 from his hospital bed when first admitted to the acute medical ward in May 2023 after struggling to get staff to give him pain relief and his Parkinson’s medication.”I was left on my own in excruciating pain, with little pain relief, and I was laying on this bed for over a week before I saw a consultant.” The 73-year-old said the first four months crushed his faith in the health service after his health severely deteriorated.”The NHS is not the NHS that I thought it was going to be, I thought I’d be looked after by people who care for me”.Mr Wild was discharged despite warning staff he was not well enough and no one could look after him at home, and ended up being readmitted days later via A&E.He said his poor care continued during his second stay, and Mr Wild recalled that he was shaking so much in pain that he knocked bottles of urine on to his bed after they had been left on the table with his food.Mr Wild was left lying in the urine-soaked sheets for hours before they were changed.”I told my wife I can’t stand it anymore, I can’t stand this pain, constantly, on and on, and if I am going to die here in this hospital, let it be soon.” ‘Serious harm’Mr Smurthwaite, a consultant anaesthetist, was called in by a colleague to assess Mr Wild after he was moved to a different ward in September. “He was the most neglected patient I have ever seen in an acute setting in my 38 years in the medical profession,” he said. The retired medic said it was clear Mr Wild had suffered as there was no consultant leading his care for months. An investigation by the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital, found Martin’s care had caused him “serious harm”.Staff had failed to identify concerns about his eating and drinking due to the inexperience of staff, the trust found.Judith Adams, chief delivery officer for Northern Care Alliance, said change have been made to “learn from Mr Wild’s experience” to ensure that “every patient and their family receives appropriate and responsive care”. Martin’s wife Lorraine, a former nurse, said the investigation failed to address complaints around a lack of consultant to care for him and over his failed discharge. “Effectively at a senior level, they forgot about him,” Mr Smurthwaite said. He added there was a failure of medical oversight and failure of junior medical staff to escalate his case.Image source, Martin WildMr Wild’s poor care was the result of a “failed system”, he said, adding he was “absolutely not satisfied” that cases like his would not happen again. “The NHS has been systematically underinvested in for 14 years, you generate a system that becomes unsafe, and those cracks in the system are so apparent.A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said it was “sorry for what Mr Wild had to endure”, adding a £2.4 billion plan to boost the NHS workforce in the long-term had been announced by the government last year.Why not follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.ukRelated Internet LinksSalford Royal — Northern Care AllianceThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

People living with one of the most common types of alopecia could soon have access to treatment on the NHS in Scotland for the first time.The drug – called Ritlecitinib – will go before the Scottish Medicines Consortium this week after it was approved for NHS use in England last month.Although the daily pill won’t cure the condition, it could provide treatment to some who have severe alopecia areata, like 21-year-old Megan McCready, from Clydebank.Since her diagnosis at the age of 12, Megan has learned to embrace her condition and now supports other young people going through the same thing.Video by Morgan Spence and Hazel Martin

An Alabama decision on I.V.F. has put an uncompromising principle on a collision course with political reality.In vitro fertilization creates life, in the most literal sense. The procedure offers a chance to make a baby, with eggs that are fertilized and develop into embryos in a lab. I.V.F. has helped countless people have children, including couples struggling with infertility and an increasing number of L.G.B.T.Q. parents. In a sense, it’s the opposite of an abortion, which ends a pregnancy.But in Alabama about 10 days ago, I.V.F. came to a sudden halt because of a State Supreme Court ruling that achieved a central goal of the anti-abortion movement. By a vote of 8 to 1, the court held that a fertilized egg outside the womb is a person. It said that couples could sue a hospital for the wrongful death of their embryos (which in this case were destroyed when someone dropped a frozen vial of them in a storage room) just as they could for the wrongful death of a child.The ruling vaulted the question of “fetal personhood” to the center of the debate that has followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Until now, the post-Roe battle consisted of familiar clashes over how much to restrict access to a single procedure — abortion.Now, the framework has shifted. The Alabama court decision made clear that this stance on the definition of life can broadly rewrite reproductive rights and send states, and perhaps the country, down unpredictable paths. In response, Alabama legislators, led by Republicans who have opposed abortion, rushed to pass bills last week so that I.V.F. can resume.Recognition of fetal personhood from the moment of conception has been a longstanding aim of leading conservative theorists. “The Alabama ruling gave the pro-life movement the closest thing in 50 years to what it has been striving for,” said Daniel K. Williams, a historian at Ashland University in Ohio who has written three books about evangelical activism. “The pro-life movement was never just about banning abortion. It was about codifying legal protections for human life at every stage. That is what Dobbs” — the 2022 decision overturning Roe — “did not do. Now they have that in Alabama.”Supporters of in vitro fertilization protested the Alabama Supreme Court ruling at the State House on Wednesday.Charity Rachelle for The New York TimesWe 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.

Published1 day agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Annabel RackhamHealth reporterCompanies selling super green supplements claim a scoop of their magic powder, mixed with water, is all you need to improve your health.Many promise a long list of potential benefits, such as stronger hair and nails, increased energy and decreased bloating.The clean, often green packaging advertises a list of ingredients such as pre and probiotics, antioxidants and vitamins.But experts have told the BBC there are easier and cheaper ways to get these nutrients into our diets.Tamsin Hill, a registered dietitian for the NHS, says she first came across them through targeted social media advertising and, because of her job, looked into what they were offering.She looked at the market leader, Athletic Greens, which was last valued at £945m ($1.2bn), and claims that taking its superfood powder AG1 made users feel more energetic, have clearer skin and less cravings.”I looked on the back of the packet at the ingredients and thought they weren’t likely to improve your health in a significant way,” she tells the BBC.Image source, Getty ImagesAnother company, Rheal Superfoods, which was featured on BBC programme Dragon’s Den in 2021, claims its daily super greens blend supports digestive health, immune system and “overall wellness from within”.Free Soul’s FS Greens blend also makes similar claims, promising to offer digestion and immunity support through key ingredients such as ashwagandha, golden kiwi and maca.A spokesperson for Athletic Greens told the BBC: “Our team of scientists and researchers have reviewed thousands of studies as part of the formulation and continuous improvement process for AG1.” The Free Soul team also told us their product “includes clinically studied and patented ingredients”.Rheal Superfoods, which was also contacted by the BBC, does not make any scientific claims in its online marketing.These products have also been approved to be sold in the UK by the Food Standards Association, the regulator which monitors food safety.’Playing on our health anxieties’Miss Hill says analysing these three products in particular: “If we look at the research, these claims aren’t backed up by scientific evidence and the evidence that we do have is very poor quality.”She adds: “It has very few people in the studies and lots of them are only in a petri dish, so fairly unreliable.” Plant-based diets good for the heartLiquid diets: Do they work and are they safe?Bigger breakfasts better for controlling appetiteImage source, Getty ImagesMiss Hill says she feels that these products, which count as ultra-processed because they have a complicated manufacturing process, “are playing on our health anxieties”.She says from her experience as a dietitian that “younger generations are becoming increasingly health-conscious” but is concerned “people are being misled into spending money for a perceived health benefit that’s not really there”.Registered nutritionist and author Jenna Hope says she thought super green products initially had a niche appeal, but says the huge number of products available on the market “suggests that people are buying them”.One industry estimate suggests the green powder market will double from £220m in 2023 to nearly £395m by 2030.”There’s lots of misleading information – these brands make you think you need these products to be healthy and support your cognitive function, your gut health, energy and sleep,” Ms Hope tells the BBC.”But actually we know that if you focus on having a healthy and balanced diet, you can get those benefits as well and don’t need to consume these elite green powders,” she adds.’It’s the weekly budget of a food shop’Super green powder supplements vary in price, but cost about £1 to £4 per day depending on which one you choose.”For some people that can be the weekly budget of a food shop,” Ms Hope says.”So if we instead focus on consuming lots of fruits and vegetables, even things like frozen spinach, greens, beans and pulses like lentils and whole grains, that’s really affordable,” she adds.Ms Hope emphasises that even reducing your intake of refined sugars, artificial sweeteners and ultra-processed foods will have a really positive effect on your health.Image source, Getty Images’There really isn’t a one size fits all’Miss Hill says that while these supplements may not have the science behind them to back up their claims, “they’re not harmful, so people can try them if they want to”.There is also another aspect that Ms Hope considers, that “for some people, they can put you in a healthy mindset”.”So if you start your day with these greens, you may feel more confident to make healthier choices later on in the day, even if they don’t necessarily make you healthier,” she adds.Ms Hope also considers that for people who are perhaps time-poor, there might be a benefit.”There really isn’t a one size fits all – if you take an individual with a highly stressful job, this could help them get closer to an adequate amount of nutrients,” she adds.She says they can also help people with dietary restrictions that prevent them from consuming some types of fruit and vegetables.Tips for a healthy dietNichola Ludlam-Raine, who represents the British Dietetic Association, tells the BBC “whole foods should always be the first choice for nutrition”.”Green supplements are certainly not necessary for health or a healthy diet, and in addition they do not count towards your five-a-day,” she adds.She recommends that people should focus on eating 30 different plant-based foods a week, such as whole grains, to increase fibre intake and adds that anyone who wants to take a green supplement should first consult a dietitian or registered nutritionist.More on this storyPlant-based diets good for the heartPublished25 May 2023Bigger breakfasts better for controlling appetitePublished16 September 2022Vegetables alone not enough to reduce heart riskPublished21 February 2022Liquid diets: Do they work and are they safe?Published8 March 2022