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Showing results for tags 'Medicine - Respiratory'.
Found 109 results
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News Article
Asthma attacks in more than 1m people linked to UK cost of living rationing
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
More than a million people in the UK have experienced life-threatening asthma attacks after cutting back on medicine, heating or food amid the soaring cost of living crisis, a survey suggests. One in five (20%) people living with asthma in the UK – of which there are 5.4 million – have had an attack as a result of changes they have been forced to make due to rising energy, food and household bills, according to the research by Asthma + Lung UK. Fuel poverty campaigners described the figures as “distressing”. Almost half of the 3,600 people with lung conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bronchiectasis surveyed by the charity said their health had worsened since the crisis began. Asthma + Lung UK warned there could be a “tidal wave” of hospital admissions in the next few months as cold weather, an abundance of viruses and people cutting back on medicines, heating, food and electricity put them at increased risk. Sarah Woolnough, the charity’s chief executive, said: “Untenable cost of living hikes are forcing people with lung conditions to make impossible choices about their health. “Warm homes, regular medicine and a healthy diet are all important pillars to good lung condition management – but they all come at a cost. We are hearing from people already reporting a sharp decline in their lung health, including many having life-threatening asthma attacks. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 28 September 2022 -
Content Article70,000 people in the UK are living with pulmonary fibrosis. Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis has the information, support and stories to help you live a healthier life with pulmonary fibrosis.
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Content Article“I wish my GP had known more about my disease” is a comment made by patients with pulmonary fibrosis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis on a regular basis. Pulmonary fibrosis can be difficult to diagnose and misdiagnosis is common. That’s why Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis has partnered with the Royal College of General Practitioners to create a new module aimed at improving awareness of pulmonary fibrosis diagnosis. They have also got resources and materials for your patient, so that they have the support they need from diagnosis.
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EventuntilJoin respiratory specialists, Dr Daryl Freeman and Dr Vincent Mak, for this interactive webinar. This 1-hour, interactive webinar will cover: Community ‘hublets’. The outpatient transformation workstream. Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) and Primary Care Networks (PCNs). Quality assurance and interpretation of spirometry. Register
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News Article
Cold homes will cost children’s lives and cause long-term damage, warn experts
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Cold homes will damage children’s lungs and brain development and lead to deaths as part of a “significant humanitarian crisis” this winter, health experts have warned. Unless the next prime minister curbs soaring fuel bills, children face a wave of respiratory illness with long-term consequences, according to a review by Sir Michael Marmot, the director of University College London’s Institute of Health Equity, and Prof Ian Sinha, a respiratory consultant at Liverpool’s Alder Hey children’s hospital. Sinha said he had “no doubt” that cold homes would cost children’s lives this winter, although they could not predict how many, with damage done to young lungs leading to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema and bronchitis for others in adulthood. Huge numbers of cash-strapped households are preparing to turn heating systems down or off when the energy price cap increases to £3,549 from 1 October, and the president of the British Paediatric Respiratory Society, also told the Guardian that child deaths were likely. “There will be excess deaths among some children where families are forced into not being able to heat their homes,” said Dr Simon Langton-Hewer. “It will be dangerous, I’m afraid.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 1 September 2022 -
News Article
Family welcomes new guidance to prevent breathing tube deaths
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A grieving family has welcomed new guidance to try to prevent a common surgical procedure from going wrong and causing deaths. Oesophageal intubation occurs when a breathing tube is placed into the oesophagus, the tube leading to the stomach, instead of the trachea, the tube leading to the windpipe. It can lead to brain damage or death if not spotted promptly. Glenda Logsdail died at Milton Keynes University Hospital in 2020 after a breathing tube was accidentally inserted into her oesophagus. The 60-year-old radiographer was being prepared for an appendicitis operation when the error occurred. Her family welcomed the guidance, saying in a statement: “We miss her terribly but we know that she’d be happy that something good will come from her tragic death and that nobody else will go through what we’ve had to go through as a family." Oesophageal intubation can occur for a number of reasons including technical difficulties, clinician inexperience, movement of the tube or “distorted anatomy”. The mistake is relatively common but usually detected quickly with no resulting harm. The new guidance, published in the journal Anaesthesia, recommends that exhaled carbon dioxide monitoring and pulse oximetry – which measures oxygen levels in the blood – should be available and used for all procedures that require a breathing tube. Experts from the UK and Australia also recommended the use of a video-laryngoscope – an intubation device fitted with a video camera to improve the view – when a breathing tube is being inserted. Read full story Source: The Independent,18 August 2022 -
Content ArticleAcross multiple disciplines undertaking airway management globally, preventable episodes of unrecognised oesophageal intubation result in profound hypoxaemia, brain injury and death. These events occur in the hands of both inexperienced and experienced practitioners. Current evidence shows that unrecognised oesophageal intubation occurs sufficiently frequently to be a major concern and to merit a co-ordinated approach to address it. Harm from unrecognised oesophageal intubation is avoidable through reducing the rate of oesophageal intubation, combined with prompt detection and immediate action when it occurs. These guidelines provide recommendations for preventing unrecognised oesophageal intubation that are relevant to all airway practitioners independent of geography, clinical location, discipline or patient type.
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News Article
NHS urges people to attend vital lung cancer check-ups in England
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
NHS leaders are urging people to attend vital lung cancer check-ups as figures reveal almost two-thirds of those invited are not coming forward. The NHS targeted lung health check service offered in some parts of England aims to help diagnose cancer at an earlier stage when treatment may be more successful. Current and former smokers aged between 55 and 74 are invited to speak to a healthcare professional and, if they have a higher chance of developing lung cancer, are offered a scan of their lungs. Doctors are keen to reach those who may not have sought help for symptoms during the pandemic and could be living with undiagnosed lung cancer. People diagnosed at the earliest stage are nearly 20 times more likely to survive for five years than those whose cancer is caught late, according to the NHS. The NHS has already diagnosed 600 people with the disease in travelling trucks, which visit convenient community sites across the UK, such as supermarkets and sports centres, aiming to make it easier for people to access check-ups. But figures show only a third (35%) of patients go to their lung health check when invited by the NHS. “These lung checks can save lives,” said Dame Cally Palmer, the NHS cancer director. “By going out into communities we find more people who may not have otherwise realised they have lung cancer, with hundreds already diagnosed and hundreds of thousands due to be invited." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 19 April 2022 -
Content Article
Pre-Hospital Care Podcast: Designing the RSI
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Techniques
The Pre-Hospital Care Podcast is designed to have engaging and inspirational conversations with some of the World’s leading experts relating to pre-hospital care. This session interviews flight paramedic Paul Swinton, to talk about how to optimise the rapid sequence intubation (RSI) in the pre-hospital environment. It unpacks some of the nuances, challenges, and approaches that Paul has found from being both a pre-hospital practitioner and in innovating the layout and design for an RSI in creating the SCRAM bag. SCRAM™ (Structured CRitical Airway Management) is an innovative solution for enhancing the performance of emergency airway management. It involves the systemisation, standardisation, cognitive offloading, human factors and good governance are core principles to the design and philosophy of SCRAM. -
News Article
Campaigners call for action over UK’s ‘shameful’ lung health
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The UK has the highest death rate for lung conditions in western Europe, research reveals, prompting calls from health leaders for urgent action to tackle the “national scandal”. More than 100,000 people in the UK die from conditions including asthma attacks, bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and pneumonia every year, according to data analysis by the charity Asthma and Lung UK. Across Europe, only Turkey has a higher respiratory death rate than the UK, analysis of data up to 2018 shows. It described the UK figures as “shameful”, and said that lung conditions had for too long been treated like the “poor relation compared with other major illnesses like cancer and heart disease”. Even before the pandemic, significant numbers of lung patients were not receiving “basic care” from their GP services such as medicine checks and help using their inhalers, the charity said. Over the past two years, the health of thousands more has deteriorated while they waited for respiratory care, and diagnosis rates have fallen. Katy Brown, 64, a retired nursery nurse from Bristol, who was diagnosed with COPD in February 2021, said she was shocked by the lack of medical support she has received, and the poor general awareness of her condition. “I spent two years struggling to breathe and with constant chest infections, before I finally got a diagnosis of COPD,” she said. “Even now, over a year after my diagnosis, I’m still waiting for a test that will show how bad my condition is, and further treatment. “There is a lack of awareness about how serious lung conditions are and how terrifying it is to struggle to breathe. It’s like having an elephant sitting on your chest. If I’d been diagnosed with another serious condition like a heart problem, I believe my treatment and the way I was dealt with would have been completely different.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 28 February 2022 -
Content Article
WHO European non-communicable disease dashboard (January 2022)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in WHO
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) including cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory disease and diabetes, are leading causes of morbidity, disability and mortality in the WHO European Region, causing nearly 90% of all deaths and 67% of premature deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe has released the WHO Europe NCD Dashboard, which provides graphical data on NCDs in the 53 Member States of the Region and makes comparisons between them. The dashboard enables analysis of a country’s health situation and its progress towards meeting NCD health targets. It includes standardised data from national and international registries and surveys collected by countries, WHO and other international organisations -
News ArticleMPs will be asked this week to end the “shocking” practice of making cystic fibrosis patients in England pay prescription charges for the drugs that they need to stay alive. The condition is the nation’s most common inherited, life-threatening disease and affects more than 7,000 people. Prescription charges, first introduced in 1952, were abolished in 1965; then, when they were reintroduced in 1968, exemptions were made for those suffering from long-lasting ailments such as cancers, diabetes and epilepsy. But children with cystic fibrosis were not expected to live to adulthood and so the condition was not exempted. As a result of new medicines and the creation of special physiotherapy regimes, cystic fibrosis patients now live well into their 40s. “Medicine and society have moved on, so should the exemption list to reflect modern-day experience,” said Paul Maynard, the Conservative MP for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, who will call for an end to prescription charges for the disease at a special Commons debate on the illness this week. “As someone who has a long-term medical condition – epilepsy – it has always amazed me that adults with cystic fibrosis have to pay for their prescriptions whilst I do not.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 30 January 2022
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Content ArticleThere is great disparity in the way we think about and address different sources of environmental infection. Governments have for decades promulgated a large amount of legislation and invested heavily in food safety, sanitation, and drinking water for public health purposes. By contrast, airborne pathogens and respiratory infections, whether seasonal influenza or COVID-19, are addressed fairly weakly, if at all, in terms of regulations, standards, and building design and operation, pertaining to the air we breathe. We suggest that the rapid growth in our understanding of the mechanisms behind respiratory infection transmission should drive a paradigm shift in how we view and address the transmission of respiratory infections to protect against unnecessary suffering and economic losses. It starts with a recognition that preventing respiratory infection, like reducing waterborne or foodborne disease, is a tractable problem.
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News Article
Rise in non-Covid virus that can leave children struggling to breathe
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Parents are being warned to look out for signs of a non-Covid virus that is “rife” in the UK amid a surge in reports of children struggling to breathe. The British Lung Foundation (BLF) said Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is staging a comeback this winter after lockdown last year meant there were fewer infections than would normally occur. It is concerned that this year children will have “much lower immunity” at a time when the NHS is already under extreme pressure. “In the last few weeks, we have noticed a surge in calls from parents who are worried about their child’s breathing,” said Caroline Fredericks, a respiratory nurse who supports the BLF’s helpline. “Most of these parents have never heard of RSV which is worrying.” RSV is common in babies and children. Almost all will have had it by the time they are two. It may cause a cough or cold but for some it can lead to bronchiolitis, an inflammatory infection of the lower airways which can make it hard to breathe. The early symptoms of bronchiolitis are similar to those of a common cold but can develop over a few days into a high temperature, a dry and persistent cough, difficulty feeding, and wheezing. While many cases clear up in two to three weeks, some children will end up being hospitalised. “There are steps parents can take to make their child more comfortable at home if their RSV develops into bronchiolitis, such as keeping their fluid intake up, helping them to breathe more easily by holding them upright when feeding and giving them paracetamol or ibuprofen suitable for infants,” said Fredericks. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 12 January 2022 -
News Article
NHS drug pledge broken for asthma sufferers and smokers, report reveals
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A promise to ensure that people with severe asthma and smokers who want to quit can get the drugs they need has been broken by ministers and the NHS, a health service report reveals. Health charities criticised the persistent lack of access to vital medications for patients in England as very worrying and warned that it could damage the health of those affected. In 2019 the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS England, Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) and makers of branded medicines signed an agreement, called the voluntary scheme, to increase the number of patients able to obtain cost-effective medicines on the NHS. It covered five key areas of disease in which receipt of drugs would result in “high health gain”. These were cystic fibrosis, severe asthma, stopping smoking by using the drug varenicline, hepatitis C and atrial fibrillation and thromboembolism. However, a report which NHS England commissioned – but has not published – shows that while the target has been met for cystic fibrosis and hepatitis C, it has been missed for severe asthma and smokers seeking to quit using varenicline. It compares England’s progress against that in 10 other European countries, including France, Spain and Italy. “It’s deeply concerning that England languishes near the bottom of the league table for uptake of biologic treatments for severe asthma, the deadliest form of the condition,” said Alison Cook, the director of external affairs at Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 20 December 2021 -
Content ArticleThe Royal College of Anaesthetists recently received a coroners report where an oesophageal intubation took place and was not recognised in time to save the life of the patient. Unrecognised oesophageal intubation is preventable through adherence to published recommendations on the monitoring of exhaled carbon dioxide (capnography) and its correct interpretation. All clinicians involved in airway management should watch the College and DAS video on capnography. Always remember 'No Trace = Wrong Place' and actively seek to exclude oesophageal intubation when a flat capnograph trace is encountered.
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Content ArticleThe overarching objective of the national Adoption and Spread Safety Improvement Programme (A&S-SIP) is to identify and support the spread and adoption of effective and safe evidence-based interventions and practice. Each of the four objectives of this programme intend to make medical procedures, and discharges from acute settings, as safe as possible whilst driving forward innovation within healthcare. Learn how the programme is being delivered locally by the West of England Patient Safety Collaborative.
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News Article
Two thirds of hospital’s transplant patients died after five years
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Lung transplant patients in Birmingham are facing significantly worse survival rates as a “sobering” report has revealed two-thirds of patients have died within five years, The Independent has learned. Survival rates for lung transplant patients at University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust after five years are now almost 20 percentage points lower than the other main hospitals specialising in lung transplants. The latest figures from NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) have revealed Birmingham’s five-year survival rates decreased from 79% in 2015-16 to 31% in 2020-21, and have consistently been the lowest compared to the other four other transplant hospitals in Newscastle, Cambridgeshire, London and Manchester. The latest NHSBT’s report showed of those patients who had a transplant in Birmingham between 2012 to 2016, 31 per cent survived. During the same period in Newcastle 47 per cent of patients survived, in Papworth and Manchester 51%, while London’s Royal Harefield recorded a 56 per cent survival rate. Birmingham recorded the lowest patient survival rates 90 days after surgery and for one year after surgery between 2016-17 to 2020-21. Although for these measures the hospital was within the national average, unlike its five-year survival rates. One transplant surgeon has raised concerns over the continued poor survival rates at Birmingham, claiming they showed the “staggering” failure for the programme in the city to improve. Read full story Source: The Independent, 23 November 2021 -
Content ArticleThe purpose of this investigation by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) is to help improve patient safety in relation to the management of patients with COVID-19 being treated with non-invasive respiratory support, for example continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), in non-critical care settings. The HSIB investigation reviewed the experience of Terry, who was admitted to hospital with symptoms of COVID-19 and required support with is breathing using CPAP. On the second day after his admission to hospital, Terry was found on the floor next to his bed, having called for assistance. Terry’s CPAP tubing had become disconnected from his mask, meaning that Terry’s breathing was not supported. Staff attempted to resuscitate Terry, however they were unsuccessful, and he died.
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Content ArticleWhen Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge upgraded its face masks for staff working on COVID-19 wards to filtering face piece 3 (FFP3) respirators, it saw a dramatic fall – up to 100% – in hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infections among these staff. Healthcare workers – particularly those working on COVID-19 wards – are much more likely to be exposed to coronavirus, so it’s important we understand the best ways of keeping them safe The findings are reported by a team at the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) NHS Foundation Trust. The research has not yet been peer-reviewed, but is being released early because of the urgent need to share information relating to the pandemic.
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Content ArticleGetting It Right First Time (GIRFT) is designed to improve the quality of care within the NHS by reducing unwarranted variations. By tackling variations in the way services are delivered across the NHS, and by sharing best practice between trusts, GIRFT identifies changes that will help improve care and patient outcomes, as well as delivering efficiencies such as the reduction of unnecessary procedures and cost savings.
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News Article
Early CT scans deliver huge fall in lung cancer deaths, study shows
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Screening smokers and ex-smokers could dramatically reduce deaths from lung cancer – Britain’s biggest cancer killer – a major new study has found. Low-dose computerised tomography (CT) scans can detect tumours in people’s lungs early and cut deaths by 16%, according to the UK Lung Cancer Screening Trial (UKLS). The findings have prompted renewed calls from lung cancer experts for the government to bring in routine screening across the UK of all those who are at risk because of their smoking history. They say that early detection means patients can have potentially curative surgery or radiotherapy. “Lung cancer early detection and surgical intervention saves lives,” said Professor John Field of Liverpool University, an author of the trial. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 12 September 2021 -
Content Article
Airborne transmission of respiratory viruses
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Coronavirus (COVID-19)
In this article Wang et al. review recent advances in understanding airborne transmission gained from studying the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections and other respiratory pathogens. -
Content Article
When a patient can’t breathe by themselves, healthcare staff may decide to intubate them to make it easier to get air into and out of the lungs. A tube goes down the throat and into the windpipe, and a machine called a ventilator pumps in air with extra oxygen. It can be life-saving, but life-threatening complications can also occur during a significant number of these procedures. Sam Goodhand is a registrar in the Sussex region, specialising in anaesthetics and intensive care medicine. In this interview for Patient Safety Learning he tells us how and why he developed an accessible checklist for staff involved in intubation processes. -
Content Article
Healthier Together and The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have developed a set of resources to help you know what to do if a child is experiencing breathing difficulties or wheezing. These resources include information on: When to worry What to do How long symptoms should last Where to go for help.
