The number of patients killed or seriously injured by medical devices rose by almost a third last year, according to official figures.The statistics from the health products watchdog are likely to raise fresh fears about the safety of some types of surgery and medical technology, in the wake of the faulty breast implants scandal.

Overall the number of reports of “adverse incidents” involving devices received by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency rose by 13 per cent in 2010, to reach 10,280.

Of these, 301 cases were fatalities – a 50 per cent rise on the previous year – while 2,382 involved serious injuries.

Investigations by the MHRA showed that about a third of the incidents were down to the “healthcare establishment or user responsibility”, while a similar proportion were the fault of the manufacturer.

About a quarter of the cases involved “active and inactive implants” such as pacemakers, replacement hips, gastric bands and even contact lenses.

But the report also highlights the problems raised by French authorities over the safety of silicone breast implants made by Poly Implant Prosthese (PIP), which has led to a row between the Department of Health and private cosmetic surgery clinics over who should pay for their removal and replacement.

About 15 per cent of the incident reports involved problems with surgical equipment and a similar proportion was concerned with life support machines and incubators.

Other patients suffered problems with wheelchairs, artificial limbs, syringes and beds or hoists.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Deaths-and-serious-injuries-involving-medical-devices-up-29

Two senior paediatric pathologists say they have discovered vitamin D deficiency in a significant number of children who have died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)- cot deaths.The two doctors, Dr Irene Scheimberg and Dr Marta Cohen, say that vitamin D deficiency and associated diseases such as the bone disease rickets could also explain deaths that are often thought to be suspicious.

Both doctors believe their findings merit further investigation and research.

The findings in children from London and Yorkshire followed the discovery by Dr Scheimberg in 2009 of congenital rickets in a four-month-old baby whose parents had been accused of shaking him to death.

Chana Al-Alas,19, and Rohan Wray, 22, were acquitted of murdering their son Jayden after the jury learned that his fractures, supposedly tell tale signs of abuse, could have been caused by his severe rickets. Dr Scheimberg also discovered rickets in Jayden’s mother.

In London, Dr Scheimberg discovered vitamin D deficiency in a further 30 cases. Vitamin D deficiency was found to be a cause of death in three cases. Cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, was discovered in two small babies. A third died of hypocalcemic fits, a condition of low serum calcium levels in the blood caused by vitamin D deficiency.

Vitamin D deficiency was a co-existing finding in the sudden and unexpected deaths of eight children, so-called Sudden Infant Death or Sids; in five children with bronchial asthma and another five with combined bacteria-polyviral or polyviral infections. Two of the babies, including baby Jayden, also had rib fractures.

In Yorkshire, Dr Cohen found moderate to severe levels of vitamin D deficiency in 45 children, mostly infants aged less than 12 months, who died of natural causes. Of the 24 sudden infant deaths Dr Cohen investigated from this group, 18 – or 75% – were deficient in vitamin D.

Dr Scheimberg said severe vitamin D deficiency could make the bones of small babies very brittle and capable of fracture with little or no real force.

Dame Sally Davies Chief Medical Officer was quoted as “We need to investigate the vitamin D levels of these children carefully and the circumstances in which the bones fracture,” she explained.

“Obviously if you have bones that fracture easily then they will fracture easily they will fracture with any normal movement like trying to put a baby grow on a baby you will twist their arm. In a normal child you won’t produce anything. But in a child whose bones are weakened and [who have] an abnormal cartilage growth area, then it’s easier for them to get these very tiny fractures or even big fractures.”

Vitamin D is actually a hormone, and endocrinologists are experts in how the body is regulated by the hormone excreting glands – or endocrine organs.

Stephen Nussey is professor of endocrinology at St George’s Hospital at Tooting in south London. He believes that, despite repeated government recommendations on vitamin D supplementation, vitamin D deficiency is still not being taken sufficiently seriously by the authorities.

“Lizards are quite like humans in their vitamin D. Their dietary intake is pretty low and they need to have sun exposure and you need to have a light in the enclosure in which you keep your lizard of the right wavelength.

“If you don’t have one of those lights your reptile will get osteomalacia [adult rickets] very similar to humans. I guess the RSPCA would quite rightly prosecute you if you didn’t give your reptile vitamin D.

“But there’s no action taken against you if you don’t give it to your daughter. So that rather illustrates the importance placed on vitamin D for your reptile rather than giving it to your daughter.”

Earlier this week, the chief medical officer for England, Dame Sally Davies, wrote to doctors, nurses and other health professionals advising them to consider vitamin D supplementation for certain at risk groups, including pregnant mothers.

“We know a significant proportion of people in the UK probably have inadequate levels of vitamin D in their blood. People at risk of vitamin D deficiency, including pregnant women and children under five, are already advised to take daily supplements. Our experts are clear – low levels of vitamin D can increase the risk of poor bone health, including rickets in young children,” she explained.

“Many health professionals such as midwives, GPs and nurses give advice on supplements and it is crucial they continue to offer this advice as part of routine consultations and ensure disadvantaged families have access to free vitamin supplements through our Healthy Start scheme.

“It is important to raise awareness of this issue, and I will be contacting health professionals on the need to prescribe and recommend vitamin D supplements to at risk groups.

From: http://multi-vitamins.eu/vitamin-d-deficiencies-linked-to-cot-deaths-sids

Penicillin doses for children need to be reviewed to take account of the fact youngsters are getting heavier meaning they may not be getting an adequate dose doctors have said.Dosing guidelines have remained unchanged for almost 50 years and are mostly based on children’s ages.

But experts argue that the dose a child needs is determined by their weight – and the average weight of children has increased.

It means that children may not be receiving a big enough dose of antibiotics to combat their infection.

Giving inadequate doses also encourages bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics making them harder to treat in future, it was warned.

The average weight today of a five-year-old is 21kg and a 37kg for a 10-year-old – up to 20% higher than in 1963, researchers at King’s College London sad.

The study, led by a team at King’s College London and St George’s, University of London, said they were “surprised at the lack of recent evidence” to support current dosing recommendations for penicillins.

Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), they said ‘fractions’ of adult doses are calculated instead of basing the dose on the weight of the child who needs treatment.

The article said: “The widely used doses are still based on the original dosing principle of a big child = half an adult, small child = half a big child, baby half a small child.”

The team analysed the actual dose that would be received today based on age bands recommended in the 2010/11 British National Formulary for Children and the current weights of children based on 2009 Health Survey for England data.

The results showed doses could be strikingly low.

The authors also pointed out that many infections do not need treatment with antibiotics.

“Many of the five million children in England who receive oral penicillins each year may not need them, but those who do should receive them in an effective dose.”

Dr Paul Long, senior lecturer in pharmacognosy at King’s College London, said: “We were surprised at the lack of evidence to support the current oral penicillins dosing recommendations for children, as it is such a commonly used drug.

“Children’s average size and weight are slowly but significantly changing, so what may have been adequate doses of penicillin 50 years ago are potentially not enough today.

“It is important to point out that this study does not provide any clinical evidence that children are receiving suboptimal penicillin doses that lead to harm, and we want to reassure parents of that.

“But what we are saying is that we should ensure that children with severe infections who need these antibiotics the most are still receiving an effective dose.”

A US company contracted to provide IT technology for the National Health Service is set to receive a £2 billion extension despite the failed project being abandoned.Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) has reportedly informed Wall Street that it expects its contract to provide electronic patient records across the NHS to be extended.

Taxpayers are now facing an estimated £2 billion bill, despite the company already failing to deliver a fully functional version of its software, The Times reported.

The £11.4 billion National Programme for IT, set up in 2002 by bliar, was at the time spun as the world’s biggest civilian computerisation project.

It aimed to give doctors instant access to patient records wherever they were being treated and CSC had signed a deal to computerise records in most of England.

Digitising the medical records of the country’s 62 million people was the core objective of the National Programme for IT in the NHS, accounting for £7 billion of the total estimated cost.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, announced in September that he was abandoning the scheme to create a national patient database because it had “let down” the health service.

He made the decision to “urgently dismantle” the failed project after criticism it was not value for taxpayers’ money.

Yet the company stated in official US papers that it was in talks with the British Government for its contract to be extended until 2017, at a cost of up to £2 billion.

Computer applications installed as part of the scheme have also failed or been scrapped.

However, £250,000 in bonuses has been paid by the DoH to 80 people involved in the scheme as a reward for “an exceptional contribution to delivery”.

CSC, one of the world’s biggest IT providers, had been contracted to provide patient record software, known as the Lorenzo system, to 166 NHS hospitals. But it has delivered on 10 projects. None of those systems is fully functional.

CSC has signed deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds with Royal Mail, Identity and Passport Service and UK Atomic Energy Authority.

The Coalition’s Major Projects Authority, established to review Labour’s financial commitments, found the scheme was not fit to provide services to the NHS.

A cross-party committee of MPs concluded the programme had proved “beyond the capacity of the DoH to deliver”.

Katherine Murphy, of the Patients Association, said it was “shameful” to pour more money into a failed initiative.

Penny pinching NHS managers have introduced new viagra prescription guidelines which could limit thousands of couples to having sex once a fortnight.New policy documents advise GPs in parts of the country that patients in need of Viagra or similar drugs should be limited to two pills per month, down from the normal prescription of four.

Although the policy was described as a “recommendation” by NHS authorities, local medical committees told the GPs’ magazine Pulse in GPs slam secrecy over evidence for Viagra rationing restrictions it was being handed down to family doctors as an “edict”.

Erectile dysfunction medication is already stringently limited on the NHS and can only be prescribed to patients with certain conditions such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and prostate cancer.

According to the NHS some 2.2 million prescriptions for erectile dysfunction drugs were issued last year, with 14.5 million tablets issued at a cost of about £78 million.

NHS guidance acknowledges that there “appears to be no clinical reason to restrict the number of tablets” but it adds that, according to research, the average person has sex four times a month.  The average frequency of sexual intercourse in the 40 to 60 age range is once a week.”

The new policy is aimed at economising on non-essential treatments, recommending that the minimum effective dose be prescribed “two times per month using the drug with the lowest acquisition cost.”

The guidance applies to sildenafil (Viagra), vardenafil (Levitra) and tadalafil (Cialis).

Richard Hoey, editor of Pulse, said: “Ask most doctors and they will say that being able to live a satisfactory sex life is a key part of health and wellbeing, but the NHS has never recognised that in its policy on treatment for erectile dysfunction.

“Limiting patients to drugs like Viagra just twice a month is to treat sex like an unnecessary luxury, and completely fails to recognise the degree of anguish it can cause some men with erectile dysfunction.”

Erectile dysfunction is very common in middle aged and older men, with an estimated 50 per cent of those between 40 and 70 experiencing the condition to some degree.

Viagra and other medications can be bought privately, but the cost of about £40 for eight pills can be prohibitive, and patients must also pay for a private prescription.

The new prescription guidelines were drawn up by South Central Priorities Committees, which covers primary care trusts (PCTs) in Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire, Berkshire East, Berkshire West and Buckinghamshire.

People who choose- and stick to, healthy New Year’s resolutions tend to end up being even more virtuous while bad habits compound themselves new research has found.People who make healthy changes to their life tend to find other benefits occur as a positive side effect.

Positive changes have a domino effect meaning people who don’t smoke tend to eat less fatty food and those who quit cigarettes find that they eat more fruit and vegetables.

The study was carried out by the social research experts at the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) for the Department of Health.

While healthy habits breed more healthy habits, the same was also found with unhealthy habits.

People who regularly ate fried food were more likely to eat too much salt and people who consumed too much alcohol also ate fewer fruit and vegetables.

Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies said: “The New Year is a great time to renew efforts and give up unhealthy habits, such as smoking, and take up healthier ones, such as regular physical activity, improving our diet and drinking less.

“This NatCen research shows that if you make one healthy resolution this New Year you might get double the benefits as you are more likely to make other positive healthier changes too. So, start thinking about other areas where you can improve your health and set yourself up for a healthier life, for 2012.”

So if you have made a promise to improve your wellbeing in 2012- you now have a double reason to stick to your new lifestyle. Good Luck!

Health Direct wishes you a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year.Health Direct wishes you a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year in 2012 and thanks you for your comments, posts and support throughout 2011.

We would also like to take the opportunity to thank and support all of those hard working professionals within the NHS- without whom we would all be paddleless.

The number of patients who contracted life threatening infections in NHS hospitals has almost doubled in two years to a record level, official figures have shown.Recorded cases of patients with a “nosocomial condition” – any infection acquired in hospital or a medical environment – also rose by more than a third last year compared with the year before.

A large proportion of the patients involved were aged over 75, the figures from the NHS Information Centre show. Illnesses related to such infections led to average stays in hospital last year of 31.1 days.

Experts blamed poor hygiene for the dramatic rise in infections, including superbugs MRSA and Clostridium difficile (C. diff) as well as norovirus and E.coli.

But the Department of Health dismissed the “misleading” figures, published online, saying that officials have “got better and better at tackling hospital infections”.

According to the new figures, supplied by NHS hospitals, the number of patients found by consultants to have hospital acquired infections rose last year reached a record 42,712.

That figure increased from the 31,447 recorded in the previous year and almost double the 22,448 documented in 2008/09.

Last year’s figures were the highest levels recorded in the 13 years in which the records have been publicly available. In 1998/99 there were just 335 such cases. The Centre did not provide a breakdown of illnesses.

It came as the Health Protection Agency said that there were 46 suspected outbreaks of norovirus in hospitals over the past two weeks, with more than half leading to ward closures or admissions restrictions.

The agency said the levels were within seasonal norms.

Commenting on the overall infection levels Joyce Robins, co-director of Patient Concern, said the figures were a “terrifying prospect for vulnerable elderly people who think they are going into hospital to get better”.

“It contrasts sharply with the happy propaganda that has been telling us that infection rates had dropped sharply,” she said.

A DoH spokesman said: “The NHS has got better and better at tackling hospital infections, demonstrated by the record lows we have seen this year.

“Because we are not complacent, we have introduced mandatory reporting of more hospital infections. That means that we have shone a light on the problems previously swept under the carpet.  But patients should be confident that the measures we have taken will continue the downward trend in hospital infections.”

The number of people being admitted to hospital after drinking too much alcohol has more than doubled in less than a decade, new research show.Some 1,173,386 people in England were admitted to casualty for injuries or illnesses caused by drinking in 2010/11, compared with just 510,780 in 2002/3, according to the research.

The figures for last year represent an 11 per cent increase on the previous 12 months, when alcohol-related admissions stood at 1,056,962.

Separate information published by Anne Milton, the public health minister, showed that since January an estimated 7,074 under-18s have been admitted to hospital due to alcohol abuse.

A recent report predicted that binge drinking will cost the NHS £3.8 billion by 2015, with 1.5 million A&E admissions a year.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, blamed Labour’s 24-hour drinking policy and accused the last government of “taking their eye of the ball” on the issue of binge drinking.

He said: “These figures are disturbing evidence that, despite total consumption of alcohol not increasing recently, we have serious problems with both binge-drinking and long-term excessive alcohol abuse in a minority of people.

“Our alcohol strategy, which we will set out in the new year, will outline what further steps we are taking to tackle this growing problem.”

Recent Local Alcohol Profiles for England figures also show that the number of hospital admissions for conditions attributable to alcohol are rising at a similar rate.

The number of admissions has more than doubled since 2002/03 and increased by nine per cent last year.

In 2002/03 there were 926 admissions per 100,000 people for conditions caused by alcohol, rising to 1,743 per 100,000 in 2009/10 and 1,898 last year.

The biggest increase over the past 12 months was in London, with a jump in admissions of 14 per cent, followed by the East of England with 10 per cent.

Health officials have issued a warning about the serious threat posed by the norovirus bug after an outbreak has seen cases jump by 20 per cent on this time last year.The winter diarrhoea and vomiting bug has affected 35 hospitals, with hundreds of beds unavailable after 27 wards were shut in the past two weeks to isolate infected patients and deep cleaned.

Overall confirmed individual cases across the country from July to mid-December are 19 per cent higher than during the same period last year.

Norovirus is extremely contagious and can be lethal to the elderly, very young or very sick patients.

People who have been ill are being asked not to visit friends and relatives in hospital until they are well.

Medical bosses at hospitals across the country are working to prevent the condition spreading and to reopen wards that were closed yesterday.

Nationally data from the Health Protection Agency released last week shows that norovirus rates remain below the level expected for this time of year, possibly reflecting the mild weather until now.

The HPA declares norovirus season has started when 4.8 per cent of calls to NHS Direct are about vomiting. Last week there were 4.2 per cent of calls about vomiting.

The first sign of Norovirus is usually a sudden sick feeling followed by forceful vomiting and watery diarrhoea. Other symptoms include a raised temperature, headaches, stomach cramps and aching limbs.

The data showed that last week the North East and South West were the worst affected.

Three hospitals reported that 124 beds are unavailable as a result of the ward closures. It is thought that the true number across all eight hospitals will be more than 200.

Wards were also closed to new patients at Montagu Hospital in South Yorkshire while 82 beds were closed on two wards at Northwick Park in Harrow, north London.

Croydon Health Services said it had one ward closed to new admissions.

Two wards were also closed at Warwick Hospital and the Richard Wells Ward was shut at Bedford hospital to contain a bout of gastroenteritis.

Director of nursing and patient services at Bedford hospital, Eiri Jones, warned visitors not to sit on hospital beds and not to visit at all if they had been ill in the preceding 72 hours.

Queens Hospital in Burton had one ward temporarily closed after a number of cases of diarrhoea and vomiting while the Countess of Chester Hospital had visiting restrictions in place at four wards to contain the outbreak.

A 14-bed ward at the University Hospital Southampton Trust was closed and County Durham and Darlington said it had seen isolated cases but had not had to close any wards.

Visitors to Northern Devon hospitals were warned only close relatives should visit patients and Mid Essex Hospital Trust said it had closed wards last weekend because of a similar outbreak.

The Royal College of GPs say the virus has not been a major problem so far this year – although outbreaks can occur very quickly, as the complaint is extremely infectious.

A statement from the Health Protection Agency said: “Norovirus is highly contagious and can be transmitted by contact with an infected person; by consuming contaminated food or water or by contact with contaminated surfaces or objects. The virus spreads rapidly in closed environments such as hospitals, schools, nursing and residential homes.

“Anyone who thinks they may have norovirus should not to go to their doctor’s surgery or A&E as this could spread the illness to vulnerable people and health care workers.”