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Showing results for tags 'Screening'.
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News ArticleThe number of women in the UK who have not had vital NHS breast screening, which can stop people dying from breast cancer, has risen by an estimated 50% - to nearly 1.5 million women - since services resumed, the leading UK breast cancer charity warns during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Breast Cancer Now reveals an alarming increase of around half a million women who haven’t been screened since services restarted in summer 2020, estimating that around 1,480,000 fewer women in the UK had breast screening between March 2020 and May 2021, compared to pre-pandemic levels. This comes a year after the charity reported that almost one million women had missed breast screening due to COVID-19 seeing services paused. According to the charity, nearly 12,000 people in the UK could have been living with undiagnosed breast cancer at the end of May 2021, due to the impact of the pandemic on breast screening services and fewer women being referred to specialists with possible symptoms of the disease since March 2020 – a frightening prospect when early detection can stop people dying from the disease. Full article here Source: Breast Cancer Now Also covered in the Independent
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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 -
News ArticleA review into the work of a locum consultant radiologist has so far identified "major discrepancies" affecting 12 cases. A full lookback review of 13,030 radiology images was launched last month. The doctor worked at hospitals run by the Northern Health Trust between July 2019 and February 2020. The review steering group chair said it was "images in levels one and two that we are most concerned about". "To date there are 12 level ones and twos [approximately 0.5% of the total number reviewed]," said Dr Seamus O'Reilly, the Northern Trust medical director. "Most of these concern CT scans where inaccurate initial reading of the scans could, or is likely to, have had an impact on the patient's clinical treatment and outcome." More than 9,000 patients have been contacted as part of the review, which is looking at radiology images taken in Antrim Area, Causeway, Whiteabbey and Mid Ulster Hospitals as well as the Ballymena Health and Care Centre. Read full story Source: BBC News, 28 July 2021
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News Article
Sisters with sickle cell had devastating, and preventable, strokes
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
It was 4am on a Sunday in San Antonio, US, when Dana Jones heard an ominous sound, barely audible over the whirring of box fans, like someone struggling to breathe. She ran down the hall and found her daughter Kyra, age 12, lying on her back, gasping for air. Terrified, she called 911. A police officer, the first to arrive, dashed into Kyra’s bedroom, threw the slender girl over his shoulder and laid her on a leather sofa in the living room. He asked her mother, an oral surgery technician, to give her CPR. Kyra’s lips were ice-cold. An ambulance whisked the girl to Methodist Children’s Hospital, where staff members swarmed her and put her into a medically induced coma. Kyra, who has sickle cell, had suffered a devastating stroke — her second — a common complication of this inherited disease, which afflicts 100,000 Americans, most of them Black. She most likely would never have had the strokes if she had been given an annual screening test and treatment proven more than two decades earlier to prevent 9 out of 10 strokes in children with the disease and recommended by the National Institutes of Health. But like countless other children with sickle cell, she was never screened. Read full story Source: New York Times, 23 May 2021 -
EventuntilIn September 2020 the UK Government announced the winners of its first Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Health and Care Awards and Kheiron's bid was successful. The funding that's been won will accelerate the roll out and rapid adoption of Mia (Mammography Intelligent Assessment) to address critical workforce challenges in NHS breast screening services in the UK. Kheiron is using the next 3 years to technically deploy and generate the evidence that our AI tool (Mia) can be safely adopted as the second reader in the breast screening workflow. They will be doing this across 15 NHS Breast Screening sites in the UK to prove generalisability. The tool will need to work for any woman, anywhere. This webinar presents an opportunity to find out more about the strategic context of the work with talks from the national leads at NHSEI and NHSx backing the project, clinicians helping to run the research and Kheiron itself on what we hope to achieve. Register
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Content ArticleCancer screening involves testing for early signs of cancer in people without symptoms. It can help spot cancers at an early stage, when treatment is more likely to be successful, or in some cases prevent cancer from developing the first place. The screening test for bowel cancer is the faecal immunochemical test, or FIT, that looks for tiny traces of blood in your poo. These tests are sent to everyone in the eligible population every two years. In this blog Jacob Smith from Cancer Research UK looks at the importance of increasing bowel cancer screening in socioeconomically deprived communities, where there is a higher incidence of bowel cancer and death from bowel cancer. This is partly due to lower levels of participation in screening. The blog highlights the results of a recent study carried out by the University of Sheffield to determine which interventions may be successful in reducing health inequalities related to bowel cancer screening. Modelling found that re-inviting non-participants to take part in screening each year was a highly effective intervention, and it is estimated that this approach would prevent over 11,000 bowel cancer deaths over the lifetime of the current English population aged 50-74.
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Content ArticleThis retrospective cohort study in the British Journal of General Practice aimed to identify opportunities for timely investigations or referrals in patients presenting with potential symptoms of colon and rectal cancer, or abnormal blood tests. The study found evidence that patients with these cancers presented with low haemoglobin, high platelets and high inflammatory markers as early as nine months pre-diagnosis, and the authors suggest that starting cancer-specific investigations or referrals earlier may be beneficial in patients with some of these diagnostic markers.
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Content ArticleThis article in The BMJ examines the risks and benefits of current prostate cancer screening methods in the UK. It highlights issues that prevent early diagnosis including great variation in how prostate cancers behave and the poor performance of prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing in identifying disease that requires treatment. As a result of the limited benefits of screening for prostate cancer, routine screening is not recommended by the UK’s National Screening Committee or the US Preventive Service Task Force. The authors highlight that a bid by NHS England to find an estimated 14,000 men who have not yet started treatment for prostate cancer due to the pandemic, seems to contradict this recommendation. The NHS campaign warns that people shouldn’t wait for symptoms and encourages men to use a risk checker which informs patients of risk factors including family history, age and ethnicity. The authors express concern that the campaign implies there is great benefit in detecting asymptomatic disease, which could lead people to believe that the NHS is promoting screening. They argue that the NHS needs to be clearer and more consistent in its messaging, making sure that information aimed at the public emphasises that although PSA testing is available on request for men older than 50, it is not currently recommended, and why.
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Content ArticleThis study from Pickles et al. explores experiences of women who identified themselves as having a possible breast cancer overdiagnosis.
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Content ArticleUK Asian and Black ethnic groups have poorer outcomes for some cancers and are less likely to report a positive care experience than their White counterparts it was found in a study from Martins et al. reported in the British Journal of Cancer. The study investigated ethnic differences in the route to diagnosis (RTD) to identify areas in patients' cancer journeys where inequalities lie and targeted intervention might have optimum impact. Across the 10 cancers studied, most patients were diagnosed via the two-week wait (36.4%), elective GP referral (23.2%), emergency (18.2%), hospital routes (10.3%), and screening (8.61%). Patients of Other ethnic group had the highest proportion of diagnosis via the emergency route, followed by White patients. Asian and Black group were more likely to be GP-referred, with the Black and Mixed groups also more likely to follow the two-week wait route. However, there were notable cancer-specific differences in the RTD by ethnicity. These findings suggest that, where inequalities exist, the adverse cancer outcomes among Asian and Black patients are unlikely to be arising solely from a poorer diagnostic process.
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Content ArticleThe life expectancy of people with severe mental illness (SMI) is shorter than those without SMI, with multimorbidity and poorer physical health contributing to health inequality. Screening tools could potentially assist the optimisation of medicines to protect the physical health of people with SMI. The aim of this research from Carolan et al. was to design and validate a medicines optimisation tool (OPTIMISE) to help clinicians to optimise physical health in people with SMI.
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Content ArticleThe government has published the first ever Women's Health Strategy for England to tackle the gender health gap.
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Content ArticleThe aim of community diagnostic centres (CDCs) is to deliver additional diagnostic capacity in England by providing quicker and more convenient access for patients and reducing pressure on hospitals. The vision is for CDCs to be ‘one-stop shops for checks, scans and tests’, designed to achieve early diagnoses for patients and timely treatment and intervention, and are part of the offer of more place-based, person-centred approaches to care, removing some of the known barriers to access. But are CDCs living up to their promise?
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Content ArticleWith A&E and ambulance waiting times dominating the headlines and over 6.7 million people waiting for elective surgery, prevention can unfortunately fall down the priority list. But cancer screening helps pick up cancers at an earlier and more treatable stage, improving survival rates and lessening pressure on the NHS in the long run. It is therefore important that it is not forgotten in the face of seemingly more urgent demands.
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Content Article
Pressure Ulcer Path: prevent and treat step by step
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Pressure ulcers
Research has shown that frontline staff understand the dangers of pressure sores but experience significant challenges in their attempts to prevent them. The research, undertaken by NHS Midlands and East and downloadable below, showed that staff feel they do not have the time to treat patients and need improved communication between the patients, their carers and the homes from which they might have come. In response to this, NHS Midlands and East has created the Pressure Ulcer Path, a tool to support staff in preventing pressure ulcers and treating them, alongside a number of useful resources. -
Content ArticleThe Patient Safety Authority has put together information and tips for patients on a range of topics.
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Content ArticleBasic assessment tracking form for nursing home residents from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
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Content ArticleWorldwide, cervical cancer is one of the leading causes of death from cancer in women. Cervical cancer accounts for 2% of all new cancer cases in females in the UK (Cancer Research UK 2016) and is, generally, a preventable disease. The primary cause of cervical abnormalities and cancer is persistent or chronic infection with one or more of the high-risk (oncogenic) types of human papillomavirus (HPV). In most women and men who become infected with HPV, these infections will resolve spontaneously (without treatment). However, for a minority of women, the infection leads to abnormal changes to the cervix, which, if not treated, may progress to cancer 10 to 20 years later. Both understanding and identifying HPV are important public health concerns and form part of the UK National Screening Programme.
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Content ArticleAuthors of this study, published in Radiology, noted that mammography was more effective at finding breast cancer in high-risk men than in women at average risk of breast cancer. For every 1,000 mammograms done in high-risk men, 18 breast cancers were found. In comparison, five breast cancers are found for every 1,000 mammograms in average-risk women. They concluded that there is potential benefit in screening men at high risk for developing breast cancer.
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Content ArticleIn March, the charity Breast Cancer Now asked people with breast cancer to tell us how coronavirus had affected their treatment and care. 580 people responded. Many reported that they or their loved ones had experienced delays or cancellations to treatment and monitoring scans. Others had not experienced any changes to their treatment. To understand how people’s experiences may have changed and try to better quantify some of the impacts, Breast Cancer Now ran a second survey between 9 July and 6 August. 2,124 people with breast cancer responded. They also spoke to 12 healthcare professionals from different parts of the breast cancer pathway including radiographers, surgeons, oncologists specialising in drug treatment and radiotherapy, and clinical nurse specialists. This was supplemented by data available on the impact of the pandemic, for example on referrals to see a specialist. This report sets out their findings and recommendations for what needs to happen next to tackle the challenges identified. The content is split into four sections: Diagnosis Treatment Clinical trials and research Care and support.
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Content ArticleNewborn babies may need extra care in a neonatal intensive care unit or special care baby unit if they were born prematurely or if they need care for a particular health condition. Babies and infants that need long-term care can be transferred to a local unit or discharged to receive care at home. A baby with complex health needs may move between distinct areas of care or 'pathways'. This Care Quality Commission (CQC) review looked at how risks for newborn babies are identified and managed and at the care for infants in the community who need respiratory support. This review draws on one particular case that had a tragic outcome for a baby and her parents. Elizabeth Dixon was born prematurely but suffered brain damage as a result of missed high blood pressure. She died shortly before her first birthday in 2001, when there was a failure to correctly maintain her tracheostomy tube. While this review was not an investigation of the specific circumstances of Elizabeth's case, it drew on this to examine current practice, systems and guidance.
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Content Article
Care Quality Commission: Choosing a baby scanning service
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Maternity
Ultrasound scans are important for checking the health of you and your baby. There are different types of scanning service and it's important to understand what each type offers. The Care Quality Commission provides some guidelines. -
Content ArticleClinical governance is the system through which NHS organisations are accountable for continuously improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care by creating an environment in which clinical excellence will flourish. Clinical governance encompasses quality assurance, quality improvement and risk and incident management. These guidelines cover responsibilities, programme standards and performance monitoring, quality assurance, quality improvement, and risk and incident management.
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Content Article
HMP pulmonary rehabilitation project (February 2015)
Claire Cox posted an article in Prison setting
Here Nina Turner, Healthcare Manager at Rochester Prison discusses how she spotted a gap in healthcare for those in prison. She set up a pulmonary rehabilitation and screening programme for those who smoke in prison. This video sets out how they implemented the project. -
Content ArticleThis film features frontline staff from Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust explaining how they are using technology to improve the quality of care they provide their patients. The team talk about an electronic assessment tool for delirium which has increased screening of people aged 65 years and over from 800 to more than 5,600 in 12 months. They also explain how the tool has helped them increase the number of identified cases per year and reduce the length of stay for these patients. They also talk about the Global Digital Exemplar 'blueprint' they have created of this project, which is now available for other NHS organisations to use as a guide for their own local implementation of similar projects. The GDE blueprints can be found on the FutureNHS platform. To register, email: gdeblueprints@nhsx.nhs.uk
