RECENT NEWS

Diabetes UK has funded a study which has revealed that low levels of testosterone in men could increase their risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh found that low testosterone levels are linked to a resistance to insulin – a hormone that controls blood glucose levels.

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) has funded a research project that could improve how doctors predict a person’s risk of heart attack. People experiencing chest pain are often given a calcium CT score – a standard test that shows the amount of calcified or hardened plaques building up in the arteries.

Government plans to move care from acute hospitals to community settings have been criticised by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), as a survey of community nurses showed that many are facing cutbacks and spending less time with patients.

The Association for Perioperative Practice (AfPP) has announced its 2012 congress theme for ICC Birmingham on 18 October as being ‘Focus on change’, alongside a pair of prestigious key speakers.

A new report published in Diabetic Medicine has projected that the NHS’s annual spending on diabetes in the UK will increase from £9.8 billion to £16.9 bn over the next 25 years. This would result in the NHS spending 17% of its entire budget on the condition.

Endosonography can offer a more effective, cheaper and less invasive method of staging lung cancer patients, according to new research published by the National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) programme.

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The number of people dying from liver disease in England is rising, according to the first ever national report on the statistics published by the National End-of-Life Care Intelligence Network.

The Government has announced £4 million of funding for businesses to develop cutting-edge ideas to address some of the country’s biggest health problems.

In 2006, The King’s Fund launched an independent inquiry into the safety of maternity services. The report from that enquiry, Safe Births: Everybody’s business, made a series of recommendations about how the safety of maternity care could be improved.

Rare side-effects of new cancer drugs, particularly potential heart damage, are being under-reported in medical literature, according to academics in the US. They have called for ‘urgent reform’ and standardisation of the measurements of possible side-effects during clinical trials.

Following the success in Bournemouth over the last two years, Infection Prevention 2012 is set to take place at the ACC in Liverpool, from 1-3 October.

A report from Macmillan Cancer Support would suggest that older cancer patients often do not receive the same amount of treatment as younger patients due to an assumption that they would be unable to cope with the treatment.

Commenting on the international RN4CAST study, which looks at the nursing workforce and patient outcomes and recently published in the British Medical Journal, Dr Peter Carter chief executive and general secretary, at the Royal College of Nursing, said that the findings were ‘hugely significant’ and provided more compelling evidence that nursing numbers and the working environment have a direct relation to quality of care and patient experience.

Playing music in the operating theatre reduces anxiety and could improve healing time for patients undergoing operations under a local anaesthetic, concludes a recent paper published in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Read the latest issue of The Clinical Services Journal in digital format, on the enhanced website: www.clinicalservicesjournal.com

Three organisations have been shortlisted for this year’s Shared Learning Awards out of around 60 entries from across the NHS, local authorities, and the voluntary and private sectors.

An update to the guideline on prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections (HCAI’s) in primary and community care has been published by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Tourists who have visited a malaria-infected country and are over the age of 65 are almost 10 times more likely to die from the disease than those who are aged 18-35, according to a study published by the British Medical Journal.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has updated its guidance for the NHS on a procedure which avoids open heart surgery to replace a diseased heart valve.