NAPC News In Brief 24 June 2009

Contingency plans for NHS staff 
 
The West Midlands NHS has contingency plans in place in anticipation of staff being absent from work with swine flu.

The region accounts for more than half of all swine flu cases in England, with 1,154 cases being reported. The figure for England stands at 2,236.

A spokeswoman said cover can be provided should 30% of its staff be ill and she also appealed for the community to help family and friends.

How Green Tea Soothes Away Cancer In Men

Green tea could slow down the progess of prostate cancer by up to a third, according to new research conducted by the Feist-Weiller Cancer Centre in Louisiana.  Daily doses of green tea extract – equivalent to around 12 normally brewed cups – significantly reduced levels of three indicators that signal the spread of the disease.

Research looked at 26 men aged 41 to 72 who were scheduled to have their prostate surgically removed.  Until they had surgery they were given four capsules a day of Polyphenon E, a green tea extract that contains a powerful antioxidant.  The doses were taken over a period ranging from 12 to 73 days.  Some of the patients showed reductions of the indicators by more than 30 per cent.

Poison Attack On Mosquitoes That Threaten Britain

Helicopters are being used to attack swarms of killer mosquitoes heading for Britain.  The threat to public health was immense, according to a spokesman for the Nord Department environment agency, which is coordinating an airborne assault to spray insecticide over mosquito eggs and larvae. 

Experts are particularly concerned about the potential arrival of the Asian tiger mosquito, a striped monster, almost twice the size of the average mosquito.  It can carry chikungunya
fever, which has already infected people  in northern Italy and dengue, which can cause blindness.

Doctor Who Examined Baby P To Sue Hospital Over Her Dismissal

Dr Sabah Al-Sayyat, the doctor who failed to spot that Baby P had suffered serious physical abuse days before his death, is suing Great Ormond Street hospital over her dismissal.

Unpublished documents seen by the Guardian revealed that an independent medical assessment of Zayyat’s handling of the case, commissioned by the trust, concluded that even though she lacked key information, she should still have spotted signs of abuse and neglect and told social services to take immediate action.

The report said that ‘there were clear indicators that this child had been abused and probably also neglected and emotionally abused.  The facial bruising  and bruising on the back were both typical of bruising due to physical abuse.

Nurse Suspended

A nurse who ‘forgot’ to give a patient a blood transfusion has been suspended for nine months by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

Andrew Power of High Green, Sheffield, who worked at Barnsley Hospital, has been warned for giving medicine in 2004 and 2005, but in November 2005 he left a patients without a two pint blood transfusion/

Call For Sunbed Curbs As Tanning Fad Takes Deadly Toll

The rise in sun bed use is causing at least 100 deaths a year and must be curbed with a ban on under-18s, unsupervised machines and the introduction of mandatory health warnings, government experts have said.

The report by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment found that the British are so obsessed with tanning that schoolchildren queue up for 50p slot machine sun beds in their lunchbreaks.

Professor Alex Elliott, the chairman of the Committee, and lead author of the report, said that sun bed use needed to be brought under control in the same way as smoking.  He said that one tanning device available in the EU generated the equivalent of a year’s worth of sun in two minutes.
 
The Committee’s recommendations included the licensing and inspection of all commercial sun bed operators.  No accurate figures are available for the number of tanning parlours and the Sunbed Association, which issues voluntary safety guidelines, represents only about a fifth of the industry.

Professor Elliott said compliance with the voluntary code was poor.

Novartis Gains US Approval For Novel Drug

The US Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the sale of Novartis AG’s Ilaris, the inaugural drug in the company’s new drive to focus on the genetic triggers that cause disease.

Ilaris treats arare genetic disorder affection only a few thousand people around the world.  The drug also marks the first concrete result of Navartis’ seven year effort to target the genetic causes of disease.

What Is The Prognosis For Women Who Reject HRT

The press featured an article that around one million women in Britain have reportedly stopped taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) thanks to the Million Women Study.  This 2003 report concluded that women on HRT showed a twofold risk of breast cancer.  Now, however, some GPs and gynaecologists are warning that the pendulum has swung too far.  They say that hundreds of thousands of women who would benefit form HRT are being denied the safe help they need.  They argue that a possible increased risk of breast cancer is not the only factor that should be considered and that women need to know that replacement oestrogen can prevent osteoporosis, uterine cancer and heart disease in certain risk groups, while alleviating menopausal symptoms.

Belly Button Is Key To Scar Free Surgery

Scar-free surgery could be extended to NHS hospitals around the country after surgeons successfully removed organs through the navel, leaving no visible mark.  The technique has been used to remove gall-bladders, appendices, damaged kidneys and ovarian cysts.  In some cases the patient was able to go home within hours and return to work the next day, when standard procedures would have required days recuperating in hospital.

The technique is the latest development in minimally invasive surgery, also known as ‘keyhole’ or laparascopic surgery.  Paraskevas Paraskeva, a surgeon, has successfully completed more than 100 operations using the method at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London and is teaching it to colleagues around the country.

The Greatest Ever Leadership Challenge For NHS

The NHS Confederation has produced a paper very recently on ‘Dealing with the downturn.’ 

The key points the paper makes are:
o The NHS is facing a very severe contraction in its finance with an £8-£10 billion real terms cut likely in the three years from 2011.
o The need for strong leadership and radical quality and efficiency improvement is therefore greater than ever.
o History tells us that letting waiting lists grow, diluting quality and structural change should be avoided.
o The NHS will not survive the impending spending squeeze unchanged.
o Courageous decisions are needed now to reshaped services and help us prepare for the most significant leadership challenge the NHS is ever likely to face.

The Link Between Healthcare Spending And Health Outcomes For The New English Primary Care Trusts

The Health Foundation is an independent charitable foundation working to improve the quality of healthcare across the UK and beyond.  Its Quest for Quality and Improved Performance (QQUIP) is a five year research initiative of the Foundation., which has recently reported on the link between healthcare spending and health outcomes for English Primary Care Trusts.

The key points arising from the report include:
o The unique methodology detailed in the report could assist primary care commissioners in deciding what services their money is best spent on and support national policy makers;
o Current spending by primary care trusts on some important programmes of care is highly cost-effective.
o Spending on circulatory disease yield the greatest benefits in terms of life years.
o By bringing together clinical and budgetary information, programme budgeting data could be an effective mechanism for engaging clinicians in value for money issues.

The full report ‘The link between healthcare spending and health outcomes for the new English primary care trusts’ can be ordered for free and downloaded from the Helath Foundation’s website at: www.health.org.uk/publications.

Making Sense Of The New Innovation Landscape

The NHS Confederation has recently produced a briefing paper on the new innovation landscape.

Health Minister, Lord Darzi’s NHS Next Stage Review final report contained a number of new organisational structures aimed at stimulating innovation.,  But a range of comparatively recent organisations that stem from the Department of Health’s Best Research for Best Health strategy pre-date the post-Darzi structures, while the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvements also works in this territory.  All these bodies have similar aims and ideals and it is not immediately apparent how they will sit together.

The briefing describes the new innovation landscape and considers the aims of each initiative, the potential overlaps and the funds in place to support them.

Key points from the briefing include:
o The NHS has a strong record of research, discovery and invention, but has a patchy record in adopting and diffusing new services, technologies and ideas that result.
o The new emphasis on, and investment in, innovation is good news for the NHS.
o There is strong support for partnership with education and industry, and for collaboration across primary, secondary and social care.
o The innovation landscape is now quite crowded, and it can be difficult to discern how certain bodies differ from each other.

Hair Straighteners Blamed For Rise In Child Burn Cases

A surge in the popularity of hair straighteners is partly to blame for the soaring number of children being admitted to hospital with burns, a charity said.  The Child Accident Prevention Trust said that the increase could partly be attributed to accidents with hair straighteners, with anecdotal evidence that hospitals are seeing increased numbers of children who have injured themselves with hot irons. 

Straighteners can reach temperatures of up to 220C and remain hot for up to eight minutes after they have been switched off.  The number of children hospitalized for burns has risen by more than 50 per cent in the past decade, even thought the total number of accidents involving the age group has decreased.