Medical Thought Leaders

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News Medical's "Thought Leaders" series is a selection of articles written by national and international experts and trusted advisers in health and medicine. All the articles are written by experts who have been invited as recognised leaders in their fields to provide a "state of the art" contribution.

Injury prevention – research and practice: an interview with Dr Dale Hanson

Every twenty seconds someone somewhere in Australia presents to an Emergency Department seeking treatment for an injury. Every minute someone is admitted to hospital. Every hour someone dies.

13 Nov 2012

Radiotherapy protocol deviations: an interview with Dr Nitin Ohri

Radiotherapy is a key component of cancer therapy. A majority of cancer patients get radiotherapy in some form at some point in their disease course. It can be used in a curative setting or in a palliative setting.

12 Nov 2012

Smoking and smartphones: an interview with Nasser Bin Dhim, Becky Freeman and Lyndal Trevena

Australia adopted the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) in 2005. This includes a ban on all forms of tobacco advertising including on the internet.

9 Nov 2012

Cardiac arrhythmias: an interview with Dr Andrew Grace

Cardiac arrhythmias are disturbances of the heartbeat. The heart can either go too slowly, which might make people collapse or exhausted; or too quickly.

8 Nov 2012

HPV testing and cervical screening: an interview with Dr Rosa Legood

Human papillomavirus is a virus that is transmitted through sexual contact. In most cases the virus is transient and causes no harm, however in some cases it can go on to cause pre-cancer lesions and cervical cancer.

7 Nov 2012

Brain bleeds in premature babies: an interview with Edward Ahn

Premature babies are born during their third trimester and they are vulnerable to having brain bleeds because their brains are not completely developed. There are some fragile blood vessels that are present in every developing infant, but when the babies are born early, these blood vessels can be subject to changes in blood pressure and changes in breathing patterns and, due to their fragility, they can develop a hemorrhage.

6 Nov 2012

Vitamin D deficiency: an interview with Kellie Bilinski

We know that vitamin D is important in keeping bones strong. In the last 30-40 years it has also been realized that vitamin D has a lot of other roles in the body. Vitamin D essentially has a role in any cell in the body that has a vitamin D receptor.

5 Nov 2012

Hurricane Sandy’s impact on home care: an interview with Joanne Cunningham

Home care agencies, like all health providers, have only a matter of days to prepare for a specific weather event like Hurricane Sandy. However, disaster preparedness planning is a core function of home care service providers.

2 Nov 2012

Ischemic stroke: an interview with Dr Gregory Ford

A stroke is a sudden interruption of blood flow to the brain which deprives the brain of oxygen and nutrients. Approximately two millions brain cells die each minute during a stroke. This can lead to brain damage, physical and mental disability and death.

1 Nov 2012

Vitamin D and multiple sclerosis: an interview with Ellen Mowry

Vitamin D is actually a hormone. For the most part, humans obtain vitamin D through sun exposure. Ultraviolet light from the sun promotes the conversion of a compound in the skin to pre-vitamin D.

31 Oct 2012

Intravenous catheter replacement: an interview with Claire Rickard

Peripheral intravenous catheters (“IV drips”) are small plastic tubes inserted into veins, most frequently in the hand or arm.

30 Oct 2012

Allergies and hygiene: an interview with Sally Bloomfield

Allergies occur when the body overreacts to substances in our environment, such as pollen, dust mites and so forth. What happens is that when we are exposed to these potential threats, the immune system should react, deal with it, and then shut down.

26 Oct 2012

Flu protection: an interview with Dr Gillian SteelFisher of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, USA

In 2009, a new strain of influenza, or flu, virus emerged and spread rapidly to many countries around the world. It was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in June 2009.

24 Oct 2012

Thin ideal internalization: an interview with Jessica Suisman and Kelly Klump

Thin-ideal internalization is the extent to which a person identifies with the cultural ideal that thinness is equivalent to attractiveness.

23 Oct 2012

Mephedrone and memory loss: an interview with Craig Motbey

Mephedrone is a fairly new designer drug which has been around for a few years. It exploded in popularity in Europe (and particularly in the UK) before it started to spread in a major way elsewhere.

16 Oct 2012

Cannabis and the endocannabinoid system: an interview with Dr Leonora Long

Cannabis has both physical and behavioural effects. People using cannabis can experience feelings of euphoria (well-being), hunger, sleepiness, problems with motor coordination, and sometimes feelings of anxiety and paranoia.

15 Oct 2012

Type 2 diabetes screening: an interview with Dr Simon Griffin, MRC Epidemiology Unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge

Type 2 diabetes is a condition in which the body does not make sufficient insulin or the insulin it makes doesn’t work sufficiently well to maintain a normal level of blood glucose and so the blood glucose rises.

12 Oct 2012

Sun protection: an interview with Jane Hanrahan

UV radiation is a form of energy being transmitted. Sunlight is main source of UV radiation, although manmade sources also exist, such as the lamps used in sunbeds. At the earth’s surface sunlight consists of approximately 2 percent UV light, 47 percent visible light and 51 percent IR light.

11 Oct 2012

Navigating the Labyrinth of Traumatic Brain Injury to Discover a Secondary Neurological Condition

Working with individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) every day, I see the debilitating effects and long-term struggles firsthand.

9 Oct 2012

Anesthetics and protein interactions: an interview with José A. Fernández

For a long time there was a controversy about how anesthetics work. The large number of molecules that have anesthetic properties (from benzodiazepines to nitrous oxide) and their very different structures...

8 Oct 2012