News • Communication
Negative patient-doctor communication could worsen symptoms
Doctors who unintentionally communicate to patients that they do not believe or understand them could actually make their symptoms worse, a new study suggests.
News • ICU
Patients on ventilators often able to communicate
A new study reveals that more than half of patients in intensive care units (ICU) using ventilators to help them breathe could benefit from assistive communication tools.
News • Probiotics
New Guidelines for Allergic Disease Prevention
Allergic diseases represent a spectrum of health conditions and a worldwide burden in different populations. In the field of allergy and immunology the focus on prevention has become as important as effective disease management. Now for the first time there are guidelines that recommend proactive strategies for the prevention of allergic diseases. The World Allergy Organization (WAO) has…
News • Organ Transplantation
First successful organ donation from newborn carried out in UK
The very first successful organ donation from a newborn to be carried out in the UK is reported in the Fetal & Neonatal Edition of Archives of Disease in Childhood. The donor was a girl born at term after an emergency caesarean section in the neonatal unit of Hammersmith Hospital, London. The donation involved the kidneys, which were transplanted into a patient with renal failure, and liver…
Article • Tackling mobile tumours
Precision radiotherapy with 4D imaging
Radiotherapy always encounters particular challenges when a tumour is ‘mobile’. This is when radiotherapy must be carried out over several weeks. Within that period the tumour position, shape and expansion typically will keep changing. Thus radiotherapy needs continuous adaptation to maintain continuously precise radiation. Report: Chrissanthi Nikolakudi
Article • Immune system
Outwitting cancermechanisms
The human immune system is usually very efficient in protecting the body against diseases by eliminating pathogens as well as infected, damaged or otherwise suspicious cells. However, it often fails because tumours have developed efficient strategies that hamper the system’s ability to detect and destroy the cancer cells. Report. Ludger Weß
Article • Surgery
Recycling blood lost during major surgery
Sucking up blood spilt during a major surgical procedure, or drained from a heart-lung machine after surgery, the Hemosep cell concentration system has a blood bag that uses a chemical sponge technology and mechanical agitator to filter red and white blood cells and platelets through a plastic membrane so that they can then be returned to the patient by intravenous transfusion. Report: Mark…
News • Monitoring
Ampronix's new HD Medvix series monitors available
Ampronix, a world class manufacturer of innovative medical imaging technology, reintroduces it’s Medvix line of near-patient surgical displays. The high quality HD surgical displays are now available for a lower cost.
The issue is not over-diagnosis but over-treatment
'We desperately need a ‘no treatment’ trial for DCIS', says Clive Wells, Chairman of the European Working Group on Breast Cancer Pathology, and London Regional Co-ordinator for the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) National Breast Cancer Screening Programme. Interview: Frank Swain
Innovative reusable operating theatre clothing
Optimising protective operating theatre clothing in terms of comfort and durability enables significant amounts of waste to be avoided and valuable resources saved.
Article • Patient Safety
Raising small patients’ safety yet reducing staff mileages
The safety of little children at the University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB) has been assured since February by the installation of Patient SafetyNet, an advanced remote monitoring and clinician notification system manufactured by the California-based company Masimo.
Light up your exams and minor ops
LED Soled15 lighting supplements the Starled Series of lamps manufactured by Acem Medical Company from Bologna, Italy.
The operating theatre management system
Hospital management seek more economic viability and efficiency in the operating theatre (OT) when deciding on the procurement of advanced Management Systems. The special software/hardware of systems achieve shorter operation and documentation times with uniform intervention outcomes.
Article • Incidental findings
Liver lesions are most often benign
At least 60% of liver lesions can be characterised purely by ultrasound. Screening and examinations of supposedly healthy patients often result in an accidental discovery of liver lesions. According to Dr Antonius Schuster MD MBA, Head of the Department of Radiology at the LKH Bregenz, (Vorarlberg). ‘The prevalence of such changes is around 20% of patients examined’. Depending on a…
News • Hospital renovation
The newly integrated operating theatre
For image management, they progressed from a video-based routing system to a system that uses the network.
Healing with software
Barmer GEK, Germany’s second largest statutory health insurer, is covering the expense of a web-based stimulation therapy developed by Caterna Vision GmbH, a spin-off from the University of Dresden. Report: Cornelia Wels-Maug
Critical care ventilation
The new Carescape R860 is an intuitive critical care ventilator that uses advanced lung protection tools and an innovative user interface to help improve patient care.
Tiny nanodevice monitors cancer treatment
A tiny nanoscale device can accurately measure a patient’s blood for methotrexate – a commonly used but potentially toxic cancer drug – in under 60 seconds, according to biomedical instrument designer Jean-François Masson, and Joelle Pelletier, a DHFR enzyme specialist, both at the Chemistry Department, University of Montreal.
Disaster medicine is not for perfectionists
The Ebola epidemic in West Africa, war in Syria, typhoon in the Philippines – over and over, German doctors are among those deployed to help. We interviewed Dr Johannes Schad, Medical Director of the Foundation of the German Institute for Disaster Medicine, about his direct experiences on the ground at the worst of times. Interview: Sascha Keutel
The enduring respiratory valve
Back in 1938, the precision machinist and innovator Hans Rudolph created what is possibly the first respiratory valve specifically for human/animal pulmonary studies.
UK researchers focus on ventilator weaning techniques
Research being conducted in the United Kingdom is focusing on techniques to help improve the weaning process for patients coming off mechanical ventilation in hospital intensive care units. Report: Mark Nicholls
A perfectly shining product
The new surgical lighting,
Medical video integration
IPS1000A, a video management system from FSN Medical Technologies, aims to help operating theatre (OT) staff to spend less time on the complexities of video use. This system provides popular OT integration capability such as source selection, advanced windowing features, easy switching, and PIP/PBP mode, the manufacturer reports.
Low energy, cold light, long life
The Starled3 NX is suitable for many applications in the operating theatre and diagnoses in, for example, gynaecology, dermatology and general medicine.
Endogenous bacteria
Is chlorhexidine still the best decolonisation method? For many decades decolonisation – be it selective intestinal, oral or skin decolonisation – has been the accepted procedure to prevent infections by endogenous bacteria. Report: Brigitte Dinkloh