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Mental health patients who miss two or more GP appointments within the space of a year are eight times more likely to die in the subsequent 18 months than those who miss none, a study suggests. The University of Glasgow study looked at 274,547 patients with long-term mental health conditions, at surgeries across Scotland between […]
Smokers and problem drinkers who are admitted to hospital in England will be given help to quit or cut down, to reduce demands on the health service. The measures are part of a long-term plan to be announced over the next few days by NHS England. It said addiction to alcohol and tobacco were two […]
More than 3,000 patients of an outpatient New Jersey hospital have been warned that they may have been exposed to hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. The patients received care at HealthPlus Surgery Center in Saddle Brook between January and Sept. 7, the New Jersey Department of Health said in a statement. The alert follows […]
NHS Fife has become the first health board in Scotland to perform hip replacements in day surgery. The procedure is only suitable for about 15% of patients but can speed up recovery and free up hospital beds. Following a method developed in Denmark, staff can have patients back on their feet just hours after the […]
The family of a man who died after receiving a liver transplant from a donor with undetected cancer has called for more thorough tests. Tom Tyreman, 63, from Stockton, initially recovered after the operation at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital a year ago, but died of cancer in February. There was later found to be a small […]
New rights should be given to severely ill mental health patients detained in hospital to stop abuse and neglect of this vulnerable group, a review says. The 1983 Mental Health Act is outdated and needs an overhaul, sectioning is being misused and does not properly protect patients’ the rights, it says. The independent review – […]
I’ve worked as a dietitian in a gastroenterology practice long enough to have seen many food trends come and go. When I first started practicing, an austere, sugar-free regimen called the “candida diet” was popular among patients of mine who had gone the alternative health route before consulting with me, so I practically got whiplash […]
Urgent and drastic changes to the rules around medical devices, such as pacemakers, are needed to protect patients, according to the Royal College of Surgeons. It wants a register of every device in every patient set up so doctors know if new innovations are causing harm. An investigation by 58 media organisations has uncovered patients […]
Medical devices that are unsafe and have not been adequately tested are ending up inside patients’ bodies, an investigation has revealed. The devices include heart pacemakers, rods to correct spines, and artificial knees and hips. The investigation found implants that had failed in baboons, or were tested only on pigs and dead bodies, were coming […]
Diana was 57 when she took her own life, fewer than 24 hours after she was seen at her busy local accident and emergency department following an overdose. She had been struggling with anxiety and suicidal thoughts for some time, but at A&E, although she was cared for physically, no-one called the mental health team. […]
Nearly one in five local hospital services are consistently failing to hit any of their key waiting-time targets, BBC analysis shows. Twenty-nine hospital trusts and boards out of 157 have not hit a single target for a whole year. Northern Ireland is struggling the most – all five trusts have failed their key targets for […]
A rising number of patients are facing long waits for key NHS tests as UK hospitals struggle with staff shortages, a BBC investigation shows. Tests such as scans and biopsies are crucial for diagnosing illnesses. But tens of thousands of patients are waiting weeks – sometimes months – for them, leading to potentially harmful delays […]
Rachell Moodie had been married for just nine months when she got the diagnosis: stage 2 invasive ductal carcinoma, the most common kind of breast cancer. “We got married early,” said Moodie, who was 24 at the time. “Everyone gave us a hard time about it, but thank goodness that we did.” Because Moodie’s uncle […]
Doctors need to get better at having difficult conversations with dying patients and not just in their final days, according to a report from the Royal College of Physicians. It says doctors should talk to people who could die within 12 months, who may be frail or terminally ill, and give them choices over their […]
VIEQUES, Puerto Rico ― As the sun began to set on this small isolated island off Puerto Rico’s eastern coast, Sandra Medina de Jesús lay quietly on a hospital stretcher in her house. The 42-year-old mother, bedridden because of an ulcer in her tailbone, had just returned from one of the three 11-hour journeys she […]