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25.01.2022 "One Sunday night in the middle of hosting a dinner, I received a frantic call from a patient’s spouse. His wife was in strife, from swallowing a fish bone that had been hiding in her sashimi. What should they do?" Read Dr Pam Rachootin's latest column.
24.01.2022 From self-administered prostate examinations to fad diets and unproven remedies, Dr Pam Rachootin has seen it all when it comes to 'do-it-yourself' medicine.
24.01.2022 "An hour before the operation, the patient took a phone call and had difficulty in finding his words. He even joked that he was having a stroke."
24.01.2022 The mere phrase ‘human-monkey chimera embryo’ sounds like a bioethicist’s worst nightmare or, perhaps, a science-fiction writer’s fantasy.
24.01.2022 The rapid uptake of telehealth also presents new opportunities to manage chronic disease via remote patient monitoring, writes Dr Centaine Snoswell (PhD), a research fellow in health economics at the University of Queensland.
23.01.2022 While a surplus of caution might help reduce the spread of COVID-19, it may ultimately be impossible for doctors and nurses to isolate at home for 12-14 days every time they are exposed to the coronavirus, says Dr Edwin Leap.
22.01.2022 "Some researchers conducting clinical trials on a COVID-19 vaccine have not revealed to the public what the placebo contains, but they should," writes Dr Jeremy Howick (PhD) from the University of Oxford.
22.01.2022 "My anxiety rose to heights that I hadn’t experienced for decades, as if I were again facing final exams in medicine." Read Dr Pam Rachootin's latest column.
21.01.2022 Basic models for COVID-19 suggest herd immunity is achieved when 60% of people are immune.
21.01.2022 Infectious diseases expert Dr Jim Newcombe continues his reflective journey into understanding this pandemic and how we should respond.
20.01.2022 Mentemia, which was launched in 2019, has been drastically updated with coronavirus-specific resources.
20.01.2022 "My anaesthetist friend probably dishes out more ‘nerve agent’ per year than the KGB. Happily, he is also considerably more likely to follow the product’s safety leaflet instructions." Read Dr Justin Coleman's latest column.
20.01.2022 "Our waiting room looks like a crime scene with all the tape stopping people sitting on the chairs and more tape making Xs and arrows on the floor."
19.01.2022 "A middle-aged woman sought my advice about a possible melanoma on her heel," writes Dr Craig Lilienthal. "After diligently viewing the lesion with my dermatoscope and then eliminating the 'naevus' with an alcohol swab, I explained that the dark brown mark had come from the dark brown stain inside her new shoes."
18.01.2022 The Medical Board of Australia makes it clear that there is no place for sex in the doctor-patient relationship and that this prohibition extends to consensual sexual relationships with patients.
17.01.2022 The 2019 flu season saw more than 300,000 cases of influenza confirmed in Australian laboratories and an estimated 1000 deaths.
17.01.2022 "While an under-resourced Victorian public health system has faced challenges, the aged care tragedy rests firmly on the shrugging shoulders of federal inattention," writes Professor Paul Van Buynder from Griffith University.
17.01.2022 "Mask requirements in healthcare environments is something that will likely be with us for a very long while," writes Dr Suneel Dhand.
16.01.2022 Boris Johnson's government has forked out 161 million ($290m) on 5000 ‘Nudgebox’ tests a portable, rapid version of the traditional PCR test.
16.01.2022 The RACGP fellowship exams had to be cancelled on Friday and Saturday due to widespread technical failures leaving candidates distraught. Here the college offers its apology and pledges full refunds and ongoing support.
15.01.2022 "I always assumed I would hate the 9-5 world. But now and then, between overdose and chest pain, cardiac arrest and social disaster, I try to imagine a life without unexpected encounters, unknown dangers, or unforseen complications."
15.01.2022 Early research from Spain has suggested public health officials can estimate the prevalence of COVID-19 within 10% accuracy of serology survey by simply testing the sewage.
15.01.2022 Last week, the Australian government announced it would put $6 million towards the research and development of three local COVID-19 vaccine candidates, via the Medical Research Future Fund.
15.01.2022 In healthcare, apologies are a key part of responding when a patient has been harmed and are essential to re-establishing the therapeutic relationship.
14.01.2022 "Men are all over women’s bodies dead, male anatomists, that is," writes Melbourne GP and award-winning novelist Dr Leah Kaminsky. "Their names live on eponymously, immortalised like audacious explorers for conquering the geography of the female pelvis as if it were terra nullius."
14.01.2022 Research on a Melbourne family has raised important questions over how to test and manage kids compared with adults.
14.01.2022 "We should not merely compare lockdown to doing nothing, but weigh it against other strategies," writes bioethicist Professor Julian Savulescu.
14.01.2022 "We have been conned by Big Food into eating too many carbohydrates." Read Dr Craig Lilienthal's latest column.
12.01.2022 In the face of stingy Medicare rebates and increasing patient demand for long consults, is the solution to give up the old-fashioned notion of seeing patients one by one?
12.01.2022 "How do we deal with study results that go against the cultural climate or what we deem as 'political correctness'?"
11.01.2022 During the past six months, there has been an increase in federal Department of Health investigations into the operation of Australian medical practices, says Zac Herps from Hillhouse Legal Partners.
11.01.2022 "The largest providers of mental healthcare in the country, GPs, are invisible in the budget," writes Dr Louisa Stone, a GP and clinical associate professor at ANU in Canberra. "Their patients, who have no other option for mental healthcare because they are too poor, too rural, too unwell or not unwell enough, are invisible in policy."
10.01.2022 What are the implications of humans or robots being given electronic skin capable of emulating the experience of pain?
10.01.2022 A doomsday scenario of an end to human sperm production has been back in the news recently, now with the added threat of shrinking penises.
10.01.2022 It is often claimed that online trolls are acting out of insecurity but Australian research indicates that this might not be the case.
09.01.2022 "We must be careful that we don’t generalise about COVID-19’s herd immunity from what we know of infections where the immunology is comparatively straightforward," writes Stephen Leeder, who is an emeritus professor of public health and community medicine at the University of Sydney.
08.01.2022 "Should everyone have to refer to the ‘arteria radicularis magna’ or to the ‘the great anterior radiculomedullary artery’ rather than ‘the artery of Adamkiewicz’?" Professor Stephen Leeder from the University of Sydney weighs in on the 'dead white dudes' debate.
08.01.2022 "As students in the 1960s, we learnt our way around the female pelvis by doing PVs on anaesthetised patients, and even then, I questioned whether the women had consented to this." Read Dr Craig Lilienthal's latest column.
07.01.2022 "Medicine, the great religion of so many, has its high priests, its orthodoxies and its heresies to be sure. But we have a new fundamentalism which expects absolute obedience."
07.01.2022 The MyLife+ app gives users the ability to track CD4 count and viral load over time.
06.01.2022 A COVID-19 vaccine from French company Valneva has yet to complete clinical trials. But it has caught the eye of governments in the UK, Europe and Australia.
06.01.2022 The nutritional quality of the different alternatives to dairy milk varies considerably, so it’s important to take note of these differences when making a selection.
05.01.2022 "Sadly, I cannot recall a single lecture devoted to flatulence during my medical education, although this topic does circulate about in the consulting room." Read Dr Pam Rachootin's latest column.
05.01.2022 Read Dr Pam Rachootin's latest column.
03.01.2022 Although the vaccine cavalry is finally coming over the hill, the need for better drugs to treat those with COVID-19 remains, writes Professor Bryan Paul Morgan from Cardiff University in the UK.
02.01.2022 The pandemic has reached a grim milestone: one million people have now died of COVID-19, according to Worldometers.
01.01.2022 "It’s unclear how long protection will last, as this study has only been underway for three months. It’s unclear if this vaccine protects against severe disease or if this vaccine will work equally well in everyone."
01.01.2022 "In any case, Australia can consider itself fortunate to have low enough case numbers that the issues of false positives becomes a major caveat in interpreting studies such as this."
