RECENT NEWS

Varian Medical Systems has announced that it has been selected to equip and service two new national proton therapy centres in England with the Varian ProBeam proton therapy system. Under a public tender, Varian was selected as the preferred supplier to provide equipment and service to operate two three-room centres to be constructed in London and Manchester in a contract valued at up to £80 million. Varian expects to conclude and sign the contract and book the equipment portion of the order in the summer.

Dr Ruth May, a former NHS theatre sister and chief nurse, is joining the health sector regulator Monitor. She has been appointed to the role of nursing director – a key post within Monitor’s patient and clinical engagement team. In this role she will complement the clinical advice provided by Professor Hugo Mascie-Taylor, Monitor’s medical director and executive director of patient and clinical engagement.

Medway NHS Foundation Trust has agreed an enhanced buddy arrangement with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, which will support the new leadership team at Medway to improve the performance of the hospital.

The most common type of ovarian cancer is more deadly if it consists of a patchwork of different groups of cells, according to a Cancer Research UK study published in PLOSMedicine.

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) does not protect post-menopausal women against cardiovascular disease and may increase risk of stroke, according to a recent study. Research, published in the Cochrane Library, looked at data from more than 40,000 women across the world.

Identifying loss of dignity and lack of respectful treatment as preventable harms in healthcare, researchers at Johns Hopkins have taken on the task of defining and ensuring respectful care in the intensive care unit (ICU). Their novel, multi-method approach is presented in a dedicated supplement to the journal Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics.

Following concerns over serious incidents in the maternity department at Furness General Hospital (FGH), the Morecambe Bay Investigation report has now been published. Covering January 2004 to June 2013, the report concludes the maternity unit at FGH was dysfunctional and that serious failures of clinical care led to unnecessary deaths of mothers and babies. The Investigation Panel also reviewed pregnancies at other maternity units run by University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust. It found serious concerns over clinical practice were confined to FGH.

New guidance has been released by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommending Olympus Medical’s transurethral resection in saline (TURis) system for use in surgery to reduce the size of enlarged prostate glands in men. NICE published the guidance in light of the potential it offers NHS hospitals to realise substantial cost savings of £285-£375 per patient while also improving patient outcomes.

According to a report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, a new medical device which combines nanotechnology with a pregnancy tester could help diagnose and treat the one million people in the UK who do not know they have kidney disease.

Reducing insulin dosage can help diabetics avoid blood sugar dips at night after exercising in the evening, a new study from Northumbria University has found. Funded by Diabetes UK and the Northumbria University Strategic Investment Fund, it is the first study to have found a way to completely avoid these dangerous falls in blood glucose that occur after exercise.

BENDER UK has played a key role in ensuring the authenticity of the operating theatre scenes in the new Sky 1 drama ‘Critical’, by providing operating theatre equipment used in the high-tech sets built for the series.

Service improvements and organisational change in the NHS are more effective when led by clinicians with management responsibilities than by full-time managers, according to research by Professor Louise Fitzgerald, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. However, these ‘hybrid’ managers are currently struggling without support and training in management, which they need to help them succeed.

A surgical team has become the first in the UK to perform a cutting-edge anaesthetic technique in major thoracic (lung) surgery. Anaesthetic and surgical staff at Papworth Hospital undertook a minimally invasive VATS (video assisted thoracic surgery) procedure using just local anaesthetic and sedation – allowing the patient to recover quicker with minimal post-operative risks.

A team of UK researchers, led by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, have been awarded a £2 million National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Programme Grant to develop and test new models of care which could dramatically improve the health of patients with cystic fibrosis.

The latest census of consultant physicians in the UK, produced by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), suggests that specialist registrars value where they work over all other factors when considering a consultant post, most wanting to stay close to where they have been training.

Friends of African Nursing (FoAN) a small UK based charity is expanding its education portfolio with the launch of a series of modules of on-line education on topics designed to assist the delivery of safe care to surgical patients.

Researchers at the Montreal Heart Institute have announced results showing patients with cardiovascular disease and the appropriate genetic background benefit greatly from the new medication dalcetrapib, with a significant reduction in heart attacks, strokes, unstable angina, coronary revascularisations and cardiovascular deaths.

Plans have been announced to allow the Nursing and Midwifery Council, General Dental Council, General Pharmaceutical Council and Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland to ask for evidence of English language ability.

A new project looking at the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis has been funded by the Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Programme, a Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health Research partnership. Pulmonary fibrosis is a lung condition that occurs because of ‘scars’ (fibrosis) developing in the lungs. There are limited treatments for the condition and there is no cure, but previous research has shown that an antibiotic called co-trimoxazole may be beneficial.

The integration of health and social care services at patient level is taking too long to become a reality, the chairman of Monitor, recently commented at a Westminster Social Policy Forum event in London. Baroness Hanham acknowledged that the “demarcation between health and social care is beginning to disappear”, but argued that the challenges currently facing the health sector mean that care must be integrated at a quicker pace.