Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Health News of the Day

Health News of the Day is a daily summary made from the selected links I post on Twitter. It is in a bullet points format with links to the original sources which include 350 RSS feeds that produce about 2,500 items per day.


  • 30% of UK NHS primary care trusts are flying in GPs from abroad to cover the evening and weekend call schedule. The average salary of a GP in the UK is £108,000. UK: 'Relying on doctors being flown in for a weekend shift is not a sustainable way to cover" the gaps in the system http://bit.ly/3a7R9

  • Common gene variation CYP2C19 explains why 30% of people are not helped by widely prescribed blood thinner Plavix http://bit.ly/1UhtC -- However, a 2010 study published in the NEJM contradicted the statement above.
  • A list of health care's big money wasters http://bit.ly/sCRFq

  • Statins and fibrates - increase 5-fold the risk of myopathy. Simvastatin is associated with the highest myopathy rate of all the statins. Easy way to detect prolonged QT - if greater than 50% of the RR interval, then it is prolonged - Cleveland Clinic Cardiology Review via @medpedshosp

  • Primary care doctors fed up, dropping out of the business, financial incentive is less than half what it was 20 yrs ago http://bit.ly/165vxu

Medical news tweets are not research articles - they are 140-character messages - please always go to the original source, links, etc. The inclusion of a Twitter update (tweet) is not an endorsement or agreement of any kind. Tweets and links do not represent endorsement, approval or support. Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.

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