RECENT NEWS

The 11th annual report of the National Lung Cancer Audit (NLCA), published by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), reveals that despite significant progress in lung cancer care during the first five years of the audit, very little has changed since then.

The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has announced a new ambition to reduce the rate of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths in England by 50% by 2030. The number of brain injuries occurring during or soon after birth will also be targeted as part of a new commitment by the Government, in partnership with consultants, midwives and other experts across the country.

Minister for Universities and Science Jo Johnson MP helped to break ground to mark the construction of a new University of Glasgow-led clinical imaging centre. The minister was visiting the site at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital where the new Imaging Centre of Excellence (ICE) will be based.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has successfully bid for £2 million of LIBOR funding to carry out a direct skeletal fixation (DSF) trial, which will enable some veterans and Service personnel to have potentially life-changing surgery.

In a recent study, every hospital Trust in England was contacted, using Freedom of Information requests, about their ‘Never Events’. These are defined as: “serious, largely preventable patient safety incidents that should not occur if the available preventative measures have been implemented”. Published in the journal Anaesthesia, the study found that surgical ‘Never Events’ happen approximately once in every 16,500 operations, leading to major harm around once in 250,000 operations.

A new ONS report produced in conjunction with PHE has been published revealing the scale of inequalities in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy across England, but also within local authority areas.

Francis Crick Institute scientists, funded by Cancer Research UK, have discovered that blocking part of the immune system’s first response might help prevent cancer from spreading, according to research published in Nature.

A joint patient safety alert has been issued by NHS England and the Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to raise awareness of the risk of having two different types of airway humidification devices simultaneously connected to a patient’s ventilation equipment.

Helping health professionals to manage intravenous fluid (IV) care for children and young people in hospital is the focus of a new NICE guideline.

NICE has announced a new quality standard aimed at improving care for women giving birth.

According to the latest Public Health England (PHE) figures, a total of 6,520 cases of TB were notified in England in 2014 – a decrease on the 7,257 cases reported in 2013. The figures give an incidence of 12.0 cases per every 100,000 people in England, down from the peak of 15.6 per 100,000 in 2011. As in previous years, London accounted for the highest proportion of cases in England, with 2,572 cases of TB in 2014, down from 2,965 cases in 2013.

New NICE guidance supports the use of the device, Virtual Touch Quantification (VTq), in people with chronic hepatitis B or C who need liver fibrosis assessment. Using this device could mean these patients can avoid having a biopsy.

A new report argues that 27% of GP appointments could potentially be avoided if there was more coordinated working between GPs and hospitals, wider use of other primary care staff, better use of technology to streamline administrative burdens, and wider system changes.

Yorkshire healthcare company JRI Orthopaedics is celebrating after being awarded the Investors in People Gold standard.

£2 billion has been spent on 12 hospital mergers over the past five years despite growing evidence that NHS mergers do not resolve the difficulties they are intended to address, according to a new report from The King’s Fund.

With an estimated 494,000 new cases per year, breast cancer is by far the most common cancer among women across Europe.

Infrared thermography (IRT) can detect joint inflammation, according to a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland.

Thousands more people would take part in bowel cancer screening if the kit included extras, according to a Cancer Research UK study published in Biomed Research International.

A new capsule form of faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has raised hopes that this effective treatment for Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infection and other bowel conditions might soon become mainstream.

The proportion of cancers diagnosed as a result of emergency presentation at hospital has decreased. At the same time, the proportion of cancers diagnosed through urgent GP referral with a suspicion of cancer (known as the two week wait) has increased.