Training Blog

Research has shown that in 20% of pregnant women suffer from depression of these 1% of these children have a small but important increased risk of heart defects. Although the overall risk is very low and women should speak to doctors before stopping their drugs. It is worth pointing out that if you have taken antidepressants a specialist scan is sometimes offered to check your baby’s heart and that there are other treatments that don’t require the use of drugs.

It is not all doom and gloom if your baby does have a heart defect as some spontaneously resolve without medical intervention. Speaking as a mother who took anti depressants during the first trimester I can assure you that this risk is very small so there is no need to launch into a major panic. As long as the professionals involved in your care are aware that you have/are taking the antidepressants, they will take this into consideration when deciding on the best plan of action.

There has always been suggestions that alcohol in moderation is good for your health but the latest theory is that a dose of alcohol could be a good treatment for people with head injuries.

The basis of this is the discovery that people are less likely to die following brain trauma if they have alcohol in their blood. The reason for this could be that alcohol dampens the body’s inflammatory response to injury. However doctors do stress that alcohol can create medical complications and is a contributory factor to many accidents.

Experts are warning that people should not interpret these findings as an excuse to drink more alcohol. These findings raise the possibility of administering ethanol to patients with brain injuries to potentially improve their outcome. The amount of alcohol consumed appears to be important factor as too little and there is no effect, too much and the beneficial effects are lost. With the right dose, alcohol stops the cascade of swelling, inflammation and further destruction of brain cells, known as secondary brain injury.

These findings seem to suggest that although alcohol helps one problem it creates another, so the question is if the benefits outway the risks?

Scientists claim that they are getting closer to curing colour blindness using gene therapy. In one study a US team, lead by Professor Jay Neitz were able to restore full colour vision to adult monkeys who were unable to distinguish between red and green. Experts believe that although more studies are needed, the same treatment could potentially work for humans who are colour blind. Until recently they had not thought it was possible to manipulate the adult brain in this way. Scientists believed that adding new sensory information could only be carried out in the earliest years of life; as this is when the brain is at its most malleable.

The study took place 2 years ago and the monkeys improved vision has remained stable ever since. The plan for Professor Neitz’s team is to continue to monitor the animals in order to evaluate the long term effects of the treatment and remain hopeful that a similar idea could be applied to humans who are colour blind.

There are several forms of colour blindness, the most common of which is inherited red/green colour blindness, which passed on through a faulty colour vision gene on an X chromosome. However colour blindness can occur as a result of diseases such as macular degeneration or from side effects of medicines. Statistics show that this research could benefit approximately 7% of men and 1% of women born with genetic colour deficiencies.

This research seems to be the first in primates to address the colour vision deficiencies and indicate that intact cells are modifiable in their colour perception.

Although there is still alot more research to be done before the test is carried out on humans or becomes available in clinics it seems to be a massive step towards curing genetic abnormalities.

Health Secretary Andy Burnham has announced plans to scrap GP catchment areas in England within a year. It follows a claim that ministers want to introduce greater choice into the family doctor system, as they believe that it will drive up standards. The government has trying to get more from GPs ever since their pay rocketed with the introduction of a new contract in 2004. It started with GPs staying open for longer but the idea of ending catchment areas was on the cards before Gordon Brown became prime minister. Lord Darzi mentioned the idea when he revealed his review of the health service in 2008. At the moment catchment areas vary in size; in rural areas doctors see patients up to 40 miles away whilst city-based doctors often only see patients up t0 a 2 mile radius

Patient choice is already a well established right in hospital care with people entitled to choose from any hospital in the country for treatment. Mr Burnham states: “I want the best to be available to everyone, not according to where they live. Too often people’s choice of GP practice is unnecessarily limited by practice boundaries, so, with the profession, I want to open up real choice in primary care.” He also argues that people’s choice of a GP should be based on their own needs – not by lines on a map

Some think that if the Conservatives win the next election they aim to make GP practices become practice based commissioners. This would mean that the majority of their commissioning functions would be carried through federations of GP practices that operate as consortiums. This proposal would mean a reduction in the commissioning role of PCTs in some areas.
Under the Tories:

• The merger of PCTs would be welcomed but not forced
• All GP practices would be expected to become practice based commissioners
• Trusts would be expected to negotiate prices for acute care at a rate under the PbR price
• The Conservatives would welcome such mergers as part of an organic process but stress they would be voluntary. They hope to encourage more GPs to take up commissioning by turning the currently indicative budgets into real cash budgets.

Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley states that it would give practices real opportunities to save and reinvest. It would also give them control over contracts and how patients are treated. Lansley stresses that any underspends would remain for the use for patient care, not profits. Health project leader at the Social Market Foundation think tank, David Furness, said the implications of an enhanced role for practice based commissioning were “much more significant than has been [previously] discussed”.

When asked if the Conservatives wanted to see more such mergers such as those in London, the response was: “It would be perfectly reasonable to aggregate, but it will be up to them [PCTs] to decide. It would be done on an organic bottom-up way if [they] choose to do so.”

Within the NHS, sources who have been asked to advise the Conservatives on the development of their health policy, said they thought the party would ideally like to see strategic health authorities and PCTs merged to create maybe 40 strategic commissioning bodies, organised around city regions. It is thought that this would rectify the problem that PCTs are perceived as being “too small” to be able to negotiate good value from large acute hospitals.

However, a spokesman for the Conservatives denied that the party were planning to merge SHAs and PCTs, saying that it was “very clear that’s not what we are planning”. He does also add that they do foresee SHAs moving their focus away from providers as more become foundation trusts. However Tory leader David Cameron and Mr Lansley have pledged they will not subject the NHS to another round of structural reorganisation.