Contents
Click on content link below to go to the news from that section: this will open a web page if you receive this by email
National News
The troubled multi-billion-pound NHS computer system suffered a fresh blow last night when it emerged that two-thirds of the hospital trusts due to have installed an electronic patient administration system for booking appointments with consultants by the end of October will not meet the deadline.
Problem families whose members commit crime, live on benefits and have poor health cost the state £250,000 a year each, research for the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit has found.
Fungi aren't just an ingredient for omelettes, risottos or the traditional weekend fry-up - they also have super medicinal qualities. Jacqui Ripley reports
As the National Minimum Wage is set to rise, Hsiao-Hung Pai investigates the realities of working long hours for basic pay at a leading pizza restaurant chain in central London
The annual bill for Whitehall consultants advising government departments is running at more than £2.2bn, an investigation by the Guardian reveals today.
About nine months ago I was diagnosed with gastro-oesophageal reflux disease, and I suffer from stomach pains, heartburn and a sore throat. I have been prescribed medications and told to avoid alcohol and coffee. My symptoms have disappeared, but my GP told me it is likely I will need to take tablets for the rest of my life. I am only 37 and don't like that idea. I would prefer to take a natural alternative.
The gifted 28-year-old could do anything - except beat depression. Now the Government's 'happiness tsar' is calling for more help for people like Charlie
Brighter teeth! Bigger breasts! Ageless skin! You'll find them all here in the capital of cosmetic surgery. But who's who behind the closed doors?
The lawyer for John Hogan, accused of murdering his six-year-old son Liam on a family holiday in Crete, is preparing this week to have a psychiatrist examine him in an attempt to prove that he was mentally not responsible for his actions.
ARROGANCE and complacency among doctors could lead to another medical disaster on the scale of the Bristol babies scandal, the Royal College of Surgeons has warned.
A DIABETIC mother of two died after waiting 22 hours to see a senior doctor at a hospital in Nottinghamshire.
A review of fertility laws has removed doctors' assessments of patients' suitability for treatment
A diet with plenty of vitamin E during pregnancy could help to reduce the risk of asthma in children, a study has shown.
INVESTORS seeking an example of how a few public sector contracts can hamper a business need look no further than iSoft. As poorly patients go, the NHS sub-contractor has plenty of justification for bed space.
Can the way that you talk hold the key to health, wealth and happiness? Rebecca Ley went to a voice coach to find out
Medical centres operated by private health companies are treating as few as a quarter of the National Health Service patients they have been paid to handle. In the worst cases, they have been operating at just 25 per cent and 27 per cent of capacity, figures obtained by The Sunday Telegraph reveal.
The total cost to taxpayers of funding the pensions of civil servants, teachers, judges and other public workers has rocketed by more than £50bn in just one year, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
The virtues of tax cutting have returned to the political debate with a vengeance.
I'm young (18), fit and healthy, but I have high blood pressure and chest pain. The doctor says these are nothing to worry about, but I am worried. I don't want to take medication as it doesn't seem to work. I also have lower back pain when I go to bed but I don't know the cause so I can't prevent it.
If you work in the private sector, you know that we live in an age of oppressive compliance, regulation and corporate governance.
All Asian children under the age of two should get vitamin D supplements, according to scientists.
Cancer patients can often feel baffled when offered a choice of treatments, a study has suggested.
The public's expectations of the NHS far outstrips what the health service can deliver, research suggests.
A surgeon has been charged with the manslaughter of a patient at a County Durham hospital.
A health trust has been ordered to look again at its decision to deny a patient a potentially life-prolonging drug.
Women who swap hormone replacement therapy for alternative therapies to treat menopause symptoms risk harming themselves, doctors say.
Staff at Musgrove Park hospital in Taunton have been asked to volunteer a day's unpaid leave to help save money.
Dozens of hospital workers have staged a candlelit vigil outside an NHS trust in protest over 800 redundancies.
Many medical students are unprepared for skilled prescribing, warn doctors in this week's BMJ.
The Food Standards Agency will ensure that testing and monitoring will be carried out on consignments of American long grain rice in the UK. This follows the statement by the US authorities that trace amounts of GM rice have been found in a sample of rice in the US.
Walkers Snack Foods Ltd has withdrawn certain batches of its own brand Salt and Vinegar Squares, due to packaging errors resulting in incorrect labelling information.
Dr Gill Morgan, chief executive of the NHS Confederation which represents over 90 per cent of NHS organisations, said: “This seems a very fair assessment by the Healthcare Commission. There have been overall improvements but it is clear that problems remain. It is only by further reducing waits for diagnostic services that we will meet the 18-week target.
International News
New drug-resistant infection is 'nightmare' say health experts
When Clair Cresswell went on holiday to France at 32 weeks pregnant she thought she had all eventualities covered.
An American judge has halted large consignments from Canada into the US of a copycat version of Plavix, the heart pill which has become the world's second biggest selling drug.
Two men have been cleared of deadly skin cancer using genetically modified versions of their own immune cells.
Dysphagia, a disorder of swallowing, is associated with increased morbidity and mortality following stroke.
Spatial neglect (a failure to notice or respond to a stimulus on the opposite side of space from a brain injury) often happens after a stroke and may predict loss of independence.
We studied the effects of an intensive poststroke phonological rehabilitation program on speech/language production in a subject with alexia and aphasia. In a single-subject design context, we studied whether treatment improved phonological processing, reading, and generalization to untreated behaviors.
This article describes current findings on the usefulness of dominance retraining strategies in poststroke patients with dominant-arm hemiplegia.
Scientists examined whether the location of brain damage, neurocognitive deficits, and/or the number of clinical features identified during a swallowing study affected stroke patients' swallowing outcomes.
Men with increased body mass index (BMI) were significantly more likely to be infertile than normal-weight men, according to research conducted at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), one of the National Institutes of Health.
Omega-3 fatty acids may prevent more sudden deaths than automated external defibrillators in homes and public places or implanted defibrillators, according to the results of a new study.
Most people who seek help for depression first visit their primary care doctors. So these professionals, along with mental health professionals and insurers, have been looking for ways to better identify and treat depression in the primary care setting, reports the September issue of the Harvard Mental Health Letter.
Symptoms of extreme jet lag may result from the body overshooting as it tries to adjust to particularly large leaps forward in time, suggests new research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst that models circadian rhythms in rats. To transition smoothly to a different time zone, the researchers recommend advancing in chunks of not more than four hours, thus allowing the body's clocks to remain coordinated. The work also has implications for rotational shift workers, such as nurses and airline attendants, as some shifts will be much harder for the body to adjust to than others.
In a large epidemiological study, researchers found that people who drank three or more servings of fruit and vegetable juices per week had a 76 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease than those who drank juice less than once per week.
Parental smoking is a pediatrician's business, experts say, yet many are reluctant to tell parents to stop smoking and offer little support for efforts to quit, a new study suggests.
Considering both direct and indirect costs, the financial burden on a woman who has chest pain and blocked coronary arteries may total more than $1 million during her lifetime. But even a woman who suffers from angina without an obstruction can expect her condition to take a toll in the neighborhood of $800,000, according to a report in the Aug. 29 issue of Circulation.
As childhood obesity has increased, many states are increasing their physical education (PE) requirements. Yet, increasing time spent in gym class does not appear to increase overall physical activity or prevent childhood obesity, according to a new Cornell study.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health and supermodel Liya Kebede has highlighted the plight of millions of women and girls living with obstetric fistula. Speaking at the launch of the WHO manual: Obstetric Fistula: Guiding Principles for Clinical Management and Programme Development, Ms Kebede said the most marginalized and impoverished groups of women and girls are most affected by the condition because of complications during pregnancy.
Each year about 1.2 million people die as a result of road traffic crashes, and millions more are injured or disabled. Most of the deaths are preventable. In many low-income and middle-income countries, users of two-wheelers - particularly motorcyclists - make up more than 50% of those injured or killed on the roads. Head injuries are the main cause of death and disability among motorcycle users, and the costs of head injuries are high because they frequently require specialized medical care or long-term rehabilitation.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) today announces that it has received approval from European Regulators in 15 EU countries for use of its anti-viral Relenza ® (zanamivir for inhalation) in the prevention (prophylaxis) of influenza A and B in adults and children 5 years of age and above.
Genentech, Inc. (NYSE: DNA) and Biogen Idec, Inc. (Nasdaq: BIIB) announced today that a Phase II study of Rituxan® (Rituximab) for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) met its primary endpoint. The study of 104 patients showed a statistically significant reduction in the total number of gadolinium enhancing T1 lesions observed on serial MRI scans of the brain at weeks 12, 16, 20 and 24 in the Rituxan-treated group compared to placebo. Genentech and Biogen Idec will continue to analyze the study results and will submit the data for presentation at an upcoming medical meeting.
This rehabilitation study investigated the effects of an intensive phonomotor rehabilitation program on a 73-year-old male, 11 years poststroke, who exhibited apraxia of speech and aphasia. In the context of a single-subject design, research questions asked if treatment would improve phoneme production and generalize to repetition of multisyllabic words, words of increasing length, discourse, and measures of self-report.
We explored the relationship between upper-limb (UL) motor functional limitations and self-reported disability in a group of stroke patients with hemiparesis. Our goal was to evaluate the relationships among impairment, functional limitation, and perceived disability assessments used in the Very Early Constraint Treatment for Recovery from Stroke clinical trial. Our results suggest that high scores on tests cannot be used as proxies for full recovery of everyday UL use on the affected side. Instead, they indicate that excellent motor recovery measured by functional limitation and impairment scales was not equivalent to restore everyday use. These findings help to further describe the relationship between measured components of UL motor function and self-reported UL use in real life.
We have developed Auto-CITE, a computer workstation that delivers the training component of poststroke upper-limb constraint-induced (CI) therapy, better know as CI therapy, which can potentially be used in the clinic or home without the need for direct supervision from a therapist.
Expressive aprosodia, caused by right-hemisphere brain damage, is the inability to change one's voice to express common emotions like joy, anger, and sadness. This study investigated two treatments for expressive aprosodia: cognitive-linguistic and imitative.
We evaluated a sentence-based procedure for improving word retrieval in two poststroke individuals with contrasting forms of aphasia. Treatment incorporated sentence production in which we removed target words, requiring participants to spontaneously retrieve them.
Drs. Smith, Ferlise and Rovner from Philadelphia, PA and Charleston, SC retrospectively reviewed their series of seven women with urethral strictures who were managed by urethral dilation followed by clean intermittent catheterization (CISC). These seven women had a mean age of 41 years (range 22-67).
We explored the effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy (AAT) for poststroke aphasia. Three men received one semester of traditional therapy followed by another of AAT. While both therapies effectively met treatment goals, no significant differences existed between test results following traditional therapy and AAT.
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and affective disorders are both very prevalent in the general population. However, it is unclear on a population level if the prevalence of different subtypes of affective disorders like unipolar major depression or dysthymia is different in individuals with specific CVDs.
Animal studies have suggested a relationship between corticosteroids and anxiety. Pilot investigation by a group of Italian researchers headed by Nicoletta Sonino (Univeristy of Padova) suggests that aldosterone may play an important role in fear and anxiety also in humans.
Cheshire and Merseyside News
THE director of public health in the North West used his final hours in the job yesterday to attack the way the NHS was being run.
A LEADING hospital consultant has criticised Liverpool university as "ageist" for not appointing a Professor of Geriatrics.
Cumbria and Lancashire News
A DEDICATED team of specialists who take patients' blood in hospital is facing the axe to save cash.
BREAST cancer patient Amanda D'argue, who won her fight to receive the wonder drug Herceptin, has welcomed the decision for all women to get the same treatment.
THE boss of East Lancashire's new health authority has been named.
A CANTEEN is to be closed overnight and nine waitresses are to be axed as part of the latest round of cost-cutting by hospital bosses.
Greater Manchester News
SHE is not the sort of person you would expect to see serving at a local supermarket - so it was no suprise shoppers did a double take when they saw Cabinet Minister Ruth Kelly serving up pies and pizzas.
A TWO-year-old boy died of meningitis just hours after his mother was told on the phone by an emergency doctor to give him Calpol and send him to bed.
IT is terrible in this day and age that older hospital patients are being put at risk of suffering from malnutrition.
THE decision whether or not to have an abortion is always a difficult one. Can you support a baby? Can you kill something that is growing inside you? The concerns are many.
CONFIDENTIAL patient notes and NHS correspondence were in a delivery van stolen from outside a doctor's surgery in Bolton.
HEALTH bosses in Bolton have drawn up guidelines to make sure that pensioners do not suffer from malnutrition.
SPORTS centres and youth clubs in Bolton are to offer teenagers health advice and information as part of a pilot programme to get more adolescents interested in their own health.
y pain because once I'm up these days I'm up. Footle around sorting a few things, reading, washing up the usual crap until about 8.00 when I head to Woolton and the Farmers Market. Come back with some bacon and bread. Nice vibe up there and the bacon looks good. Planning a bacon sarnie but the rest of the house are up and have fed themselves and Monst declares we should use the bacon tomorrow. Still I have plans for the tarragon cured bacon, it has a date with chicken and pasta tonight.
