Medcast news and blog

What is the evidence for 'medical expulsive therapy' using alpha blockers?

Eating disorders are truly holistic, affecting all biopsychosocial dimensions of health so we need to keep an open mind and our antennae alert in a wide variety of clinical scenarios in General Practice.

We want to DO something for our patients, in part driven by guidelines - get their blood pressure down, improve their HbA1c, improve their life expectancy, but have we forgotten to ask - is this what you really want? And at what point are we doing more harm than good with the treatments we prescribe?

Thankfully, Australian doctors nowadays will rarely see a case measles. Recently however, most states have issued measles outbreak alerts, largely linked to travellers visiting or returning from overseas.

There is a tendency to consider hearing loss a wasted consultation, a referral wasted time. But hearing loss leads to marked isolation, significant reduction in quality of life and has a huge economic impact.

'All screening programmes do harm; some do good as well, and, of these, some do more good than harm at reasonable cost’.

Imagine you are seeing Sue with major depression. You have referred her for talking therapy, tried a SSRI then an SNRI and she is still no better. What next? Is it worth adding in mirtazapine?

Although evidence-based medicine has undoubtedly been a force for good and has transformed clinical practice for the better, it has also been responsible for a subtle change in power dynamics when it comes to clinical policymaking.

There’s been increasing attention on the little known organism Mycoplasma genitalium as an emerging cause of sexually transmitted conditions in women and men.