Medicine and Science from The BMJ

Talk Evidence - Devices and facebook vaccines

In the second of our EBM round-ups, Carl Heneghan, Helen Macdonald and Duncan Jarvies are joined by Deborah Cohen, investigative journalist and scourge of device manufacturers.
We're giving our verdict on the sensitivity and specificity of ketone testing for hyperemesis, and the advice to drinking more water to prevent recurrent UTIs in women.
Deb joins us to talk about the massive, international, investigation into failing regulation for implantable devices - and shares some of the stories where these have harmed patients.
Finally, Carl is excised about antivaxer ads on facebook - but Helen has seen some pro-vaccine ones which are poor science too.
Reading list:
Diagnostic markers for hyperemesis gravidarum
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24530975
Effect of Increased Daily Water Intake in Premenopausal Women With Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2705079
The great implant scandle
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0btjr55/panorama-the-great-implant-scandal
Facebook antivaccine ads
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/anti-vaccination-antivaxxers-uk-advert-banned-facebook-post-vaccines-kill-babies-a8620831.html

Making multisectoral collaboration work

A new collection of articles published by The BMJ includes twelve country case studies, each an evaluation of multisectoral collaboration in action at scale on women’s, children’s, and adolescent’s health.
Collectively these twelve studies inform an overarching synthesis and accompanying commentaries, drawing together lessons learned in achieving effective multisectoral collaboration.
In this podcast, Wendy Graham, professor of obstetric epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Shyama Kuruvilla, senior strategic advisor to the World Health Organisation, join us to discuss what can be learned from those case studies.
Read all the case studies:
https://www.bmj.com/multisectoral-collaboration

Trojan Milk

Infant formula manufacturers were made pariah in the 70s, because of their marketing practices - this lead to “The Code”, adopted by the WHO, which set out clear guidelines about what those practices should be.
Now an investigation on bmj.com by Chris Van Tulleken, honorary senior lecturer at University College London, examines the practices associated with the marketing of specialist milk formula for children with cow’s milk protein allergy, and asks whether doctors organisations should be receiving money from that industry.
Read the full investigation:
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5056

The bone crushing nausea of hyperemesis

Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy affects around 70% of pregnancies. It is mild for around 40% of women, moderate for 46%, and severe for 14%.
By contrast, hyperemesis gravidarum is a complication of pregnancy rather than a normal part of it and occurs in around 1.5% of pregnancies. The psychosocial burden of HG can be heavy for women and their families.
In this podcast, Caitlin Dean Phd Candidate, Gillian Ostrowski, general practitioner, Rebecca C Painter, consultant obstetrician join us to explain what hyperemesis is like for those who experience it, and discuss what treatment options are available.
Read the full article:
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5000

God is in Operating Room 4

Healthy self confidence has an important role in surgery, but what came first - the surgeon or the ego?
In this conversation, Christopher Myers, Yemeng Lu-Myers, and Amir Ghaferi join us to talk about the (very few) surgeons who behave badly in theatre, and why that behaviour has persisted, and can be detrimental.
Read their full analysis:
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4537

Carers need a voice in the NHS

Until recently, The BMJ had a campaign of patient partnership - now we have a patient and public partnership campaign. The reason for that change is that medicine has an effect beyond the individual being treated - and this podcast interview is a very good example of that.
Anya De Iong, patient editor for The BMJ, talks to Christine Morgan - independent chair of the Greater Manchester Carers Strategic Group. Christine has a mission to bring the needs of carers into thinking and planning about the NHS - and explains how the needs of patients and carers may be similar, and different.

Acceptable, tolerable, manageable - but not to patients. How drug trials report harms.

You’ll have read in a clinical trial “Most patients had an acceptable adverse-event profile.” Or that a drug “has a manageable and mostly reversible safety profile.” And that “the tolerability was good overall.”
In this podcast, Bishal Gyawali (@oncology_bg) joins us to describe what events those terms were actually describing in cancer drug trials, and how they reduce the readers appreciation of the adverse effects of these novel drugs.
Read the full analysis:
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4383

Talk evidence - Vitamin D, Oxygen and ethics

Welcome to this, trial run, of a new kind of BMJ podcast - here we’re going to be focusing on all things EBM.
Duncan Jarvies, Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan - and occasional guests- will be back every month to discuss what's been happening in the world of evidence.
We'll bring you our Verdict on what you should start or stop doing, geek out about stats, and rant about the unevidence based world in which we live.
This week we talk about:
Vitamin D
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(18)30265-1/fulltext
Oxygen
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4169
The UK parliament's report on clinical trial transparency
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmsctech/1480/1480.pdf

Adverse drug reactions

Clinical trials for regulatory approval are designed to test efficacy, but new drugs might have adverse reactions - reactions those trials aren’t designed to spot.
To talk about those adverse reactions - how to spot them, how to report them and what to do about them, we're joined by Robin Ferner, from the West Midlands Centre for Adverse Drug Reactions.
Read the full practice article:
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4051

HAL will see you now

Machines that can learn and correct themselves already perform better than doctors at some tasks, but not all medicine is task based - but will AI doctors ever be able to have a therapeutic relationship with their patients?
In this debate, Jörg Goldhahn, deputy head of the Institute for Translational Medicine at ETH Zurich thinks that the future belongs to robot doctors - but Vanessa Rampton, Branco Weiss fellow at McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy, says they'll never be able to emulate the empathy required.
We're also joined by Michael Mittelman, executive director of the American Living Organ Donor Fund, who has had complex healthcare needs for his whole life - to explain what he feels about the prospect of his care delivered by machine.
Read the full debate:
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4669