Bladder cancer patients given an immunotherapy drug are a third less likely to see disease come back and are more likely to survive, according to a “game-changer” study.
Patients with advanced (muscle-invasive) bladder cancer had significantly less risk of cancer progressing or returning when treated with durvalumab, and were more likely to still be alive two years after treatment.
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Source: Independent, 13 January 2025
Nearly 400,000 private prescriptions for ADHD medication were issued last year as patients sought to bypass lengthy NHS waiting lists, with people spending millions of pounds on treatment.
Figures obtained by the BBC show the number of prescriptions for drugs rose from 28,439 in 2018-19 to 397,552 in 2023-24.
One family from West Yorkshire said they had chosen to remortgage their home to meet the costs, with research suggesting backlogs for ADHD assessments could take up to eight years to clear in some parts of the UK.
The Department of Health and Social Care said it was working to "bring waiting lists under control", adding that the NHS had recently launched an "ADHD taskforce" to help tackle the delays.
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Source: BBC online, 14 January 2025
A charity has met with the Health Secretary to argue that more checks are needed in infancy to find a serious condition that can cause brain damage.
Hydrocephalus is caused by excess spinal fluid or some call it "water on the brain".
Founder of Hampshire-based charity Harry's Hat, Caroline, said: "About one-in-770 babies get hydrocephalus. That is as common as Down's syndrome."
Health practitioners in England and Wales are currently expected to measure a baby's head shortly after birth and then six-to-eight weeks later to see if a baby's head is too big.
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Source: BBC online, 13 January 2025
Nearly 5,000 nurses, over 100 physicians, and advanced practitioners at Providence Oregon began striking Friday, impacting all eight state hospitals and six women’s clinics. Striking workers cite systemic understaffing, safety concerns, and job security fears due to Providence’s operational changes and private equity involvement.
The Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) has accused Providence of refusing to bargain effectively, leading to the strike after over a year of stalled negotiations. Providence countered, claiming it offered nurses a 20% pay increase and accused the union of stalling.
Governor Tina Kotek urged all parties to return to the table, emphasizing the disruption to patient care. Providence has hired 2,000 temporary nurses but struggled to find replacement physicians, consolidating women’s clinic services and reducing capacity.
Providence leadership acknowledged challenges but expressed commitment to resuming negotiations once operations stabilise.
Full article here.
Crowded accident and emergency wards mean only 15% of department heads are confident they could deal with a major incident such as a terror attack or rail disaster, new research has revealed.
In a survey of clinical directors and consultants at 71 emergency departments in England, all said their A&E was crowded, with more than 70% saying patients had to wait in corridors or ambulances at least half the time. Only 11 were confident they were “adequately prepared” to respond to a major incident.
The results, published last week in the Emergency Medicine Journal, came from a survey conducted in March last year by academics at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth and the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine in Birmingham.
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Source: Guardian, 11 January 2025
Paramedics in England are unable to respond to 100,000 urgent 999 calls every month because they are stuck outside hospitals waiting to hand over patients, endangering thousands of lives, the Guardian can reveal.
As the crisis engulfing the NHS intensified this weekend, figures showed ambulance crews are tied up at A&E for so long that on more than 3,500 occasions each day they are unable to respond to a 999 plea for help.
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Source: Guardian, 12 January 2025
Paramedics in England cannot respond to 3,500 urgent 999 calls every day because they are stuck outside hospitals waiting to hand over patients, putting other lives at risk, a Guardian investigation has found.
Here two ambulance service workers describe their experiences on the frontline that they say “feels like a war zone at times” amid the worst NHS winter crisis in years.
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Source: Guardian, 12 January 2025
A hospital is recruiting nurses to work 12-hour shifts in its corridors caring for sick patients stuck waiting for a bed.
In a sign of the deepening capacity crisis facing the health service, Whittington Hospital in Archway, north London, posted several adverts for registered nurses last week where the role was specifically described as “corridor care” or for a “corridor RN”.
Across the country, doctors and nurses have reported NHS trusts installing power sockets and oxygen lines in corridor walls, in anticipation of large numbers of patients needing to be stacked there on trolleys while they wait for a bed.
Professor Nicola Ranger, head of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Recruiting tired nurses to do extra shifts solely in corridors is desperate. It shows just how normalised this practice has become.
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Source: Telegraph, 11 January 2025
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published draft guidance for manufacturers of pulse oximeters that offers recommendations for the clinical testing and labelling of these electronic medical devices.
Pulse oximeters are small finger-clamp devices that estimate how much oxygen is being carried in the blood. Available both over the counter and by prescription, they grew in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic. But many studies have revealed that pulse oximeters can measure blood oxygen levels as higher than they actually are for people with dark skin.
One of the FDA's recommendations is to include “a diversely pigmented group of 150 or more healthy participants” in clinical studies of the devices, with at least 25% of participants falling within each skin color group on the system known as the Monk Skin Tone scale. Another is for manufacturers to “prominently display appropriate warnings” in the devices’ instructions, such as informing patients that “differences in skin pigmentation may cause differences in pulse oximeter sensor performance.”
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Source: CNN, 6 January 2024.
Nearly one million people are set to be on a NHS waiting list in Scotland by next year, analysis has revealed, in projections that have been described as “terrifying”.
The analysis produced by Edinburgh University shows NHS Scotland must treat at least 20 per cent more non-emergency hospital cases over the next three years to eliminate the backlog caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. And the research revealed the number of referrals waiting to be treated in Scotland topped 667,000 at the end of December 2023, covering an estimated 10 per cent of the population.
Researchers warned that, without any increase in capacity, the waiting list will increase to nearly one million people by December 2026.
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Source: The Scotsman, 10 January 2024
Around 20 hospital trusts across England have declared critical incidents with staff facing ‘mammoth demand’ due to the cold weather and flu.
England’s top doctor has warned staff in hospitals are facing conditions similar to the “height of the pandemic” amid a national surge in flu cases on wards. NHS figures reveal there were an average of more than 5,400 patients with flu in hospitals each day last week, up 21 per cent from the previous week and more than three times the level seen at the same point last year.
Visits to A&E also rose to an unprecedented level for December, making last year the busiest ever year for emergency departments.
Professor Stephen Powis, the national medical director for NHS England, said: “It is hard to quantify just through the data how tough it is for frontline staff at the moment – with some staff working in A&E saying that their days at work feel like some of the days we had during the height of the pandemic.”
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Source: Independent, 9 January 2024
Former health minister says medical examiners, who spot cases of intentional harm, could have been in place earlier. Jeremy Hunt has said ministers took “too long” to introduce medical examiners to investigate deaths in the NHS, as he apologised to the families of Lucy Letby's victims.
Giving evidence at the Thirlwall inquiry on Thursday, the former health secretary said he had “ultimate responsibility” for the NHS at the time Letby committed her “appalling crime” of murdering babies at the Countess of Chester hospital in 2015 and 2016. Hunt, who was health secretary from 2012 to 2018, said his government took “too long” to introduce independent medical examiners to the NHS after they were first proposed in 2004, six years before the Conservatives came to power.
Medical examiners are senior doctors who carry out independent scrutiny of deaths that are not investigated by coroners. They were introduced widely last September, 20 years after they were first proposed as a result of the Harold Shipman inquiry in 2004, then again by the Francis inquiry into the Mid-Staffordshire scandal in 2013.
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Source: Guardian, 9 January 2025
Long ambulance handover delays hit record levels in the past week as the winter crisis in the NHS reached its height. There were an average of 2,834 hour-long handover delays every day in the week to 4 January, according to the latest NHS winter sitrep data released today. That was the highest since records began.
The previous record was at the start of January 2023—a time of intense and high-profile pressures on services, due to a very high flu peak and ongoing Covid-19, when many patients were harmed.
At that time a daily average of 2,682 hour-long delays were reported. Since then, cutting handover delays has been a high priority of government and NHSE.
On Monday, HSJ reported long ambulance handover delays were surging in the Midlands and northern regions, which have recorded more of them than in the 2022-23 winter.
Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England’s national medical director, said: “It is clear that hospitals are under exceptional pressure at the start of this new year, with mammoth demand stemming from this ongoing cold weather snap and respiratory viruses like flu—all on the back of 2024 being the busiest year on record for A&E and ambulance teams."
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Source: HSJ, 9 January 2025
Chinese health officials are reportedly monitoring an increase in cases of human metapneumovirus (HMPV). There is currently no evidence that the outbreak is out of the ordinary or that a new respiratory virus or illness has emerged in China. HMPV is a virus that can cause upper and lower respiratory disease, according to the CDC. It was discovered in 2001 and is in the Pneumoviridae family along with respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, the CDC said.
A spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO) said data from China indicates "there has been a recent rise in acute respiratory infections" but that "the overall scale and intensity of respiratory infectious diseases in China this year are lower than last year."
Cases of HMPV have been steadily increasing in the U.S. since November 2024 with 1.94% of weekly tests positive for HMPV as of Dec. 28, 2024, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). By comparison, 18.71% of weekly tests were positive for flu and 7.10% were positive for COVID during the same week, the data shows.
Public health experts told ABC News that HMPV is well-known to health care professionals and commonly circulates during respiratory virus season.
MORE: Cases of RSV, flu ticking up among young children in US as respiratory virus season begins
"This is that winter respiratory virus season, indeed," Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, told ABC News. "So, all of these respiratory viruses -- influenza, COVID, RSV, human metapneumovirus -- they all increase this time of the year, in part because we get so close to each other."
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Source: ABC News, 7 January 2025
Black men in England are more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer than their white counterparts, while being less likely to receive life-saving treatment, analysis by the National Prostate Cancer Audit has found.
The analysis found that black men were diagnosed with stage three or four prostate cancer at a rate of 440 per 100,000 black men in England, which is 1.5 times higher compared with their white counterparts, who had a diagnosis rate of 295 per 100,000.
Furthermore, the research also found that black men in their 60s who had a later diagnosis were 14% less likely to receive life-saving treatments that have been approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for use on the NHS.
The research was conducted by analysing new prostate cancer diagnoses by ethnicity in England from January 2021 to December 2023, using data from the Rapid Cancer Registration dataset and the National Cancer Registration dataset.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among British men, with about 52,300 new cases and 12,000 deaths recorded in the UK each year. Black men are twice as likely to be diagnosed and 2.5 times more likely to die from the disease compared with white men.
Prostate Cancer UK is calling for the government’s guidelines to be updated as, under current guidance, it is an individual’s responsibility to find out his risk and decide if he would like to request a blood test.
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Source: The Guardian, 9 January 2025
University Hospitals Birmingham has ordered an independent review into a major international medical training programme, after concerns the scheme may be routinely underpaying overseas doctors.
The foundation trust confirmed to HSJ it was “now in the process of commissioning an independent review” into its three international medical training programmes. A spokesman said the decision to order an external review had been sparked by an earlier internal review of its medical training, which itself followed “concerns raised by clinical and non-clinical colleagues”.
And a bulletin sent to UHB staff today from chief medical officer Kiran Patel, seen by HSJ, said “pay parity” issues had come to light through the internal reviews. It follows previous reports that overseas doctors were being paid substantially less than domestic peers working at a comparable level.
Details about who will carry out the external review, how long it will take, and the terms of reference are yet to be confirmed.
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Source: HSJ, 9 January 2025
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