Prostate cancer symptoms are unfortunately difficult to spot in the early stages of growth.Only when the cancer has advanced will symptoms usually appear- which is a bad cancer sign and contributes to the approximately 10,000 deaths in the UK every year.

If you experience any of the following symptoms, you must see a medical professional immediately:

• the prescence of blood in urine and/ or semen
• pain or burning sensation when urinating
• erectile dysfunction (inability to have or sustain an erection)
• uncomfortable or painful ejaculation
• in the upper thighs, hips, or lower back, a frequent pain or stiffness
• a general pain in the prostate area
• a need to urinate frequently, especially at nighttime
• difficulty in urinating, both in starting or holding back
• interrupted or weak flow of urine

There are several Risk Factors associated with Prostate Cancer:

• Age – For men with over fifty years of age, prostate cancer is most common.
• Family history – It is also an important indicator. If you have a close male relative who has suffered or is suffering from the disease, you are twice as probable to be diagnosed with prostate cancer yourself.
• Nationality – Your nationality and racial genetics may also play a part. Studies show, for example, that African-Americans are most at risk, followed by Americans and Europeans. Asians (particularly those that live in the East and Southeast portions of the continent) are the least at risk.
• Lifestyle – Even though, the evidence in often conflicting, in the development of prostate cancer, an individual’s lifestyle, and diet may also play an important part.

At present, while prostate cancer is not an avoidable disease, it can be mitigated by alterations in a person’s food consumption and general way of life.

The most commonly employed method of testing for prostate cancer is a basic prostate exam.

It involves a physician inserting a gloved, lubricated finger into the rectum so that the physician can feel the prostate, which is located a few inches up from the rectum. A healthy prostate feels firm; if prostate cancer is present, the prostate may have hard spots on it.

For those who are squeamish towards this type of testing, an alternative method is sometimes used.

Known as a prostate cancer PSA level test, blood is taken from the patient and screened for prostate-specific-antigen levels.

Prostate-specific-antigens are present in all men, but those with prostate cancer often have a heightened level of the antigen.

Alternatively men with the BRCA1 gene have a one in 11 chance of developing prostate cancer by the age of 65, it was found.

Other tests such as X-rays and bone scans may also be useful in detecting the cancer and determining the extent to which it has spread.

Global efforts to cut the number of deaths from measles have fallen short of World Health Organization (WHO) targets.
An analysis published in the Lancet said deaths had fallen by 74% between 2000 and 2010, but the target was 90%.

Outbreaks in Africa and delays in vaccination programmes in India have stalled progress, researchers say.

A new campaign to tackle the disease has been launched, which will combine measles and rubella jabs.

In 2000 there were 535,300 deaths from measles. This fell to 139,300 deaths in 2010, according to the analysis.

The Measles and Rubella Initiative, a collaboration of international organisations including the WHO, said the decline in measles deaths was strong up to 2007, but measures “faltered” in 2008 and 2009.

This lead to outbreaks in Africa, Asia and even Europe.

Africa and India accounted for a combined total 79% of all deaths from measles between 2000 and 2010.

Measles is a highly infectious viral illness:

• Causes a fever, coughing and distinctive red-brown spots on the skin
• Contracted by breathing in tiny droplets created when an infected person coughs or sneezes
• Possible complications include pneumonia, ear and eye infections, and croup
• Serious complications include inflammation of the brain (encephalitis), which can be fatal
• Infection during pregnancy can cause miscarriage, premature labour or low birth weights

The next target is a 95% drop in deaths from their 2000 levels by 2015.

The new campaign will see the introduction of a vaccine for both measles and rubella.

Women with embarrassing medical problems are misdiagnosing themselves after consulting search engines.

They have bought the wrong medication after misdiagnosing themselves on the internet and one in ten has suffered unpleasant side effects as a result, research suggests.

Half of women have diagnosed themselves online and bought a treatment without checking with pharmacists if it is the correct product.

A similar proportion said they would seek to treat medical problems themselves before consulting doctors.

A quarter said they “dread” speaking to doctors.

The online world is just as bad as the offline world for misleading people with snakeoil potions.

The moral of the story is to make sure that you only deal with professionals who you can trust.

For medical news we suggest only using websites such as Health Direct which are regularly reviewed by independent experts:
This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.
Remember that Dr Google can’t do anything for you, except make you feel bad and paranoid

Dr Google can’t write prescriptions- nor even examine you verbally or in person.

Also, search engines can’t actually think- though they may be programmed very cleverly.

Common sense should prevail online as well as offline.

If your symptoms are bothering you that much, you should go to a qualified practitioner which in the case of medical issues is a GP.

Planned births at home and in midwifery units are more cost-effective than giving birth in hospital, particularly for women who have given birth before University of Oxford research concludes.The research, in the British Medical Journal, compared the costs of giving birth in different places and the health outcomes for mother and baby.

More than 60,000 low-risk women in England were studied over two years.

The Royal College of Midwives says all women should receive one-to-one care.

For women having their first baby, however, planned home birth was more risky for the baby but still the most cost effective option.

The study used data from the Birthplace in England national study to calculate the cost, and health effects, of women at low-risk of complications giving birth.

It looked at planned births in obstetric units, midwifery units located in the same hospital as an obstetric unit, free-standing midwifery units not in a hospital and at home.

The study takes into account all NHS costs associated with the birth itself – such as midwifery care during labour and immediately after the birth, the cost of pain relief in hospital, and the cost of any stay in hospital or neonatal unit immediately after the birth, either by the mother or the baby.

The costs for planned home and midwifery unit births take account of any hospital care a woman may receive if she is transferred into hospital during labour or after the birth.

But the costs do not include any longer term costs, for example the life-long cost of caring for babies who suffer serious birth injuries.

The study found that the average cost per low-risk woman planning birth at the start of labour was £1,631 for an obstetric unit, compared with £1,067 at home.

When the researchers analysed women who had already given birth or who had no complicating conditions, the cost differences between planned places of birth narrowed.

The authors of the study conclude that giving women the opportunity to give birth at home or in a midwifery unit saves the NHS money and is safe for baby and mother, resulting in fewer expensive interventions.

AVERAGE COST OF BIRTH

• £1,066 – births planned at home
• £1,435 – births in freestanding midwifery units
• £1,461 – births in midwifery units alongside hospitals
• £1,631 – births in hospital obstetric unitsSource: BMJ study

The study found that individual care at home is cheaper than a planned hospital birth because hospital overheads tend to be higher and women who plan birth in an obstetric unit tend to have more interventions, such as caesarean section, which are expensive.

A faulty gene that increases the chances of breast cancer in women has been found to raise the risk of prostate cancer in men four fold.Men with a strong family history of either cancer in their family could be offered genetic tests to discover if they are carrying a faulty BRCA1 gene so their health can be monitored from an early age.

Men with the BRCA1 gene have a one in 11 chance of developing prostate cancer by the age of 65, it was found.

The faulty gene seemed to be linked to a particularly agressive form of cancer making early detection and treatment vital.

The study was conducted by the The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and published in the British Journal of Cancer.

In breast cancer BRCA1 increases the chances of developing the disease by five fold, giving them a six in ten chance of breast cancer compared with a one in eight chance for healthy women.

It has led some women with faulty genes to have preemptive mastectomies rather than live with high risk of breast cancer.  BRCA1 is also associated with ovarian cancer.

In the study 913 men underwent genetic screening, with results obtained from 886 and four men were found to have alterations in BRCA1. Three out of those four men were diagnosed with prostate cancer before the age of 65.

As well as detecting BRCA1 in men with a history of cancer in their families to identify those at greater risk, genetic screening of men who already have the disease could improve their treatment, the researchers said.

There are already drugs in use that target BRCA1.

The findings come after other research showed that HIFU (high intensity focused ultrasound) can provide the ‘perfect’ outcome for nine out of ten men with early stage prostate cancer. The majority of men treated were continent, had good sexual function and were free of cancer after 12 months where as traditional surgery or radiotherapy could only offer that in half of cases.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancers affecting men in Britain with 37,000 men diagnosed each year. It claims 10,000 lives every year.

Other faulty genes have been implicated in prostate cancer including a mutation in HOXB13 which increased the risk of the disease 20 fold. It is relatively rare, occuring in less than two per cent of men with prostate cancer.

Some health authorities are spending less than a pound a day helping people with arthritis and other joint problems, while others spend three times that, according to a review that has found a postcode lottery of care.The survey by the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance (ARMA) has found an almost three-fold variation in the amount of money primary care trusts across England spend on services.

NHS Hartlepool spent £764 per patient in 2009-10, but NHS Peterborough only £275.

Examples of treatments they offer include physiotherapy, drugs, and pain management clinics.

The figures are detailed in a new report by ARMA, called Joint Delivery?

Professor David Marsh, chairman of the organisation, said: “Joint Delivery? shows that progress in delivering improved musculoskeletal care in the NHS has gone into reverse since ARMA’s previous audit in 2008.

“Urgent action is now needed to address variations in service provision and improve the quality of musculoskeletal services in the NHS.

“ARMA and its members are taking a lead by developing a musculoskeletal clinical network to improve services but we need national action to make musculoskeletal conditions a priority in the new NHS.

“That is why we are today calling for a national outcomes strategy for musculoskeletal conditions to ensure services deliver better outcomes for patients.”

At the moment about five per cent of the total NHS budget, some £4.76 billion, is spent on musculoskeletal conditions, making it the fourth highest area of programme budget spend.

Although spend had “risen rapdily in recent years”, according to ARMA, it warned that the area was at risk of being downgraded, with two-thirds of PCTs saying they had reduced the number of specialist commissioners who decide on care

A new treatment for prostate cancer can rid the disease from nine in ten men without debilitating side effects, a study has found, leading to new hope for tens of thousands of men.It is hoped the new treatment, which involves heating only the tumours with a highly focused ultrasound, will mean men can be treated without an overnight stay in hospital and avoiding the distressing side effects associated with current therapies.

A study has found that focal HIFU, high-intensity focused ultrasound, provides the ‘perfect’ outcome of no major side effects and free of cancer 12 months after treatment in nine out of ten cases.

Traditional surgery or radiotherapy can only provide the perfect outcome in half of cases currently.

Experts have said the results are ‘very encouraging’ and were a ‘paradigm’ shift in treatment of the disease.

It is hoped that large scale trials can now begin so the treatment could be offered routinely on the NHS within five years.

A larger trial is already recruiting patients and men interested in the treatment should speak to their cancer doctor or GP about being referrred, experts said.

Prostate cancer is the commonest cancer in men with more than 37,000 diagnoses each year contributing to approximately 10,000 deaths.

Current treatments include surgery to remove the whole prostate or radiotherapy. Both of which can effectively treat the cancer but often cause side effects such as incontinence and impotence.

However in many men prostate cancer will not progress to a life threatening disease meaning that radical treatment risks side effects unnecessarily. For this reason, research is now focused on reducing side effects.

Focal HIFU involves careful selection of tumours, as small as a grain of rice, within the prostate gland and targeting them with highly focused ultrasound to heat them and destroy them.

The advantage over previous HIFU and other treatments is that damage to surrounding tissue is minimised, meaning there are far fewer side effects.

In the study Focal therapy for localised unifocal and multifocal prostate cancer published in the journal Lancet Oncology, 41 men were treated with focal HIFU. After 12 months, none were incontinent and one in ten suffered impotence.

The majority, 95 per cent, were free of cancer after 12 months.

Dr Hashim Ahmed, who led the study at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust andUniversity College London, said: “This changes the paradigm. By focusing just on the areas of cancer we reduce the collateral damage to surrounding tissue.

“Our results are very encouraging. We’re optimistic that men diagnosed with prostate cancer may soon be able to undergo a day case surgical procedure, which can be safely repeated once or twice, to treat their condition with very few side-effects. That could mean a significant improvement in their quality of life.

“This study provides the proof-of-concept we need to develop a much larger trial to look at whether focal therapy is as effective as the current standard treatment in protecting the health of the men treated for prostate cancer in the medium and long term.”

The research programme is led by Professor Mark Emberton, of UCL and UCLH. He said: “Focal therapy offers harm reduction – it is a strategy that attempts to redress the balance of harms and benefits by offering men who place high utility on genito-urinary function an alternative to standard care.

“In fact, the concept is not new – tissue preserving strategies have been used successfully in all other solid organ cancers such as breast cancer by offering women a lumpectomy rather than mastectomy.”

Professor Gillies McKenna, director of the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology, said: “Clinical trials, like this one supported by the MRC, are a fantastic tool for telling us whether experimental new treatments are likely to be effective in the clinic.

“If these promising results can be confirmed in a randomised controlled trial, focal therapy could soon become a reasonable treatment choice for prostate cancer alongside other proven effective therapies.”

An investigation has started after figures emerged suggesting that a number of NHS hospital patients in England have been discharged overnight to free up beds.The Times newspaper discovered, via Freedom of Information requests, that 100 NHS trusts sent 239,233 patients home last year between 23:00 and 06:00.

NHS medical director Prof Sir Bruce Keogh said people should be sent home only when it was appropriate and safe.

The paper had contacted 170 NHS trusts in England but only 100 responded.

However, the rates of those discharged varied widely between different hospitals.

The paper reported that some 3.5% of all hospital discharges took place between those hours and this rate had steadily held for the past five years.

On the face of it, it seems shocking that any patients are being discharged at night. The data obtained by The Times suggests this may be happening in 3.5% of cases.

But that needs putting into context. It seems some hospitals are including patients who have died in their figures, while some patients, such as women who have had a baby, may choose to leave at night.

Nonetheless, it is clear there are also many cases of inappropriate discharges.

This reflects the pressure hospitals are under. Admissions to A&E units have been rising for years – and if more people are coming in, more have to leave.

The problem is compounded by the fact hospitals have very little wriggle room. They are supposed to operate at only 85% capacity, but all too often they are closer to 100%.

It means when there is a surge in patients, there is no leeway in the system – and something has to give.

If the remaining 70 trusts discharged their patients at similar rates, this would add up to 400,000 such discharges a year and almost 8,000 a week, the paper added.

Derby Hospitals Foundation Trust sent 8.7% of its patients home overnight but the trust told the Times there may have been a problem with its records.

Others with rates above 7% include the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust in Birmingham and Countess of Chester and University Hospitals of Leicester trusts.

Newcastle Hospitals Foundation Trust and Southend University Hospital Foundation Trust both said they did not discharge patients during the night.

The Times does state that the data is variable and while some hospitals admitted to keeping detailed records, others said they could not guarantee the accuracy of the figures as details were not necessarily recorded accurately.

The paper also adds that some hospitals categorise deaths as “discharges” while others do not.

Urgent checks of abortion clinics ordered by the health secretary last month cost £1 million and meant hundreds of other inspections were cancelled.The Care Quality Commission (CQC) said the request at short notice from the Department of Health meant 580 pre-planned inspections were cancelled.

Time spent on planning and inspecting equated to 1,100 days, it said.

The department said the inspections had been agreed between the CQC and the health secretary.

It added that if the regulator had said more money was needed, it would have been provided.

The inspectors visited nearly 300 abortion providers in England over three days in March, and found about 50 were not complying with laws or regulations.

Several doctors were referred to the General Medical Council, and police have been investigating too, to establish whether criminal offences have been committed.

In a letter to the Department of Health, CQC chairwoman Dame Jo Williams said the urgent inspections have had “a considerable impact on our capacity to deliver our annual targets”.

“Such a request at short notice entails Operations management time in planning the visits, cancelling pre-planned inspections as well as the compliance inspector time in carrying out the visits and drafting the reports.”

Dame Jo outlined the impact on scheduled activity in the letter, saying that 320 locations would require visits, with the total number of days required – including for planning and management – being 1,100.

“This equates to a total of 580 inspections foregone and a total of 16 inspectors being utilised on a full year basis at an estimated cost of £1.0 million,” she wrote.

She also asked that the department take into account such an impact on planned work “when considering future requests and delivery within a time limited period”.

The work of abortion clinics first came under the spotlight in February when the Daily Telegraph secretly filmed doctors and alleged some were agreeing to terminate foetuses when women did not want their baby because of its gender.

Police are investigating the allegations.

One in three NHS staff say they are not enough people in their department to get their work done, according to the annual health service survey.And almost half of NHS staff said they do not have time to complete their tasks, it was warned.

Staff cuts and a lack of cover when people are on leave or sick is to blame, a union said.

The 2011 NHS Staff Survey, of more than 135,000 health service workers in England, found some were struggling with heavy workloads.

The official NHS staff survey comes after the Royal College of Nursing warned that one in three nurses working on older people’s wards are too busy to help patients with eating or going to the lavatory.

However when hospital staff were asked if a friend or relative needed treatment in their organisation, they would be happy with the standards of care, the proportion answering ‘yes’ varied from just one in three at Croydon Health Services NHS Trust to 96 per cent at Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology NHS Foundation Trust.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “This survey shows that NHS staff remain committed to providing the highest quality of care to their patients.

“The number of staff happy with the standard of care remains stable, with some foundation trusts performing to a very high standard. Too many trusts continue to have less favourable levels of recommendation to family and friends.”

“The NHS should use this as a basis for seeing improvement in the services we deliver for patients in the future.”

Christina McAnea, Unison head of health, said: “The staff survey reflects some of the pressures felt by staff, but our own survey painted a much bleaker picture.

“Unison’s survey showed that 85% experienced an increase in workload and 83% suffered an increase in stress over the past year. The increase in workload is not a coincidence, it is down to cuts in staffing and to a lack of cover for staff on sick or on leave.”

The NHS survey also found that a fifth of staff said they cannot do their job to a standard they are personally pleased with and half would not recommend their trust as a good place to work.

Almost nine out of ten staff who deal with patients said they were satisfied with the quality of care they provided.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-staff-overworked-survey-finds