DundeeChest 3.0

Posts Tagged ‘Lung Cancer’

The MDT sessions are going well, I think. Monday’s session was a little disjointed, as it was the first ever session, leading to the oncologists having little to do until the MDT itself. To fix this, I wrote some cases for the oncologists to go through in the first 45 minutes, and they seemed to get more out of the session because of it.

Much of the discussion revolves around prognosis, and the benefits of giving chemotherapy to patients, in terms of prolongation of life, and quality of life. Disappointingly no-one had read the information I provided on “What to tell a patient with lung cancer”, which answers much of these questions. The Lung Cancer Resource Page also has on it other interactive resources about lung cancer staging, lung cancer cases, patient journeys etc.

For tomorrow’s session:

1. I will be 5 to 10 minutes late as I have to speak to the 3rd years before coming to the session. So have an extra 5 minutes in bed.
2. I am in the process of updating the materials, particularly for the chest physician group. The new materials can be made available to everyone at the end of the week.

Welcome to week 3. Last week seemed to go pretty well – I got very wet in Barcelona, and Richard managed to keep things moving along nicely back here in Beanoland. I understand that one tutor did not turn up for a ward based session, but this has been re-arranged for this week. The ITA session on spirometry has drawn some positive feedback, along with the very well received Smoking Cessation and Pulmonary Rehabilitation sessions.

Richard’s ABG sessions were the first step on a long journey for every second year – ABG interpretation continues to be complex, but you all now have a solid grounding on which to base your future work.

The core clinical problems session encouraged, and disappointed me. Those who did stay for the whole session sere able to work through the concepts of CCPs, and then specifics of the CCPs in the respiratory block. Half of the year chose to leave the session half way through – I hope you all found something productive to do for that hour.

This week we have already had Dr France’s always well received lung cancer lectures, and the patient journey session with Dr Goudie. The DVD is available to take home, if anyone wants it (Come down to my office, where my secretary can burn you a disc!)

Later in the week will be the brand new MDT sessions, and a mixed bag of lectures on pleural disease, interstitial lung disease, and sleep apnoea. The lectures are up online to browse through now.

All being well, I’ll see you for the pleural disease lecture on Thursday.

Cavitating Squamous Cell Carcinoma, Creative Commons License from Yale Rosen

The opportunities to attend post mortems are not what they were – when I was at medical school back in Addenbrookes in the mid 90’s, we went to PM every day, apart from Grand Round day, to see the specimens from the morning. We were grilled, but we saw so much, and learnt so much.

I doubt many current medical students ever go to PM. So here’s a great Flikr stream of pathological specimens taken from patients who succumbed to lung cancer. The photos are remarkable, and cover a wide spectrum of disease. Well worth a look.

Cigarettes on display in a Canadian duty free store

The Scottish Government voted 108 vs 15 to ban the open display of cigarettes in Scottish stores, the BBC News website reports

The Tobacco and Primary Medical Services Bill will also ban cigarette vending machines and introduce a registration scheme for retailers.
BBC News Website

Large stores have until 2011, smaller stores until 2013, to remove all displays of cigarettes and vending machines.

Opposition leader John Drummond of the Scottish Grocers’ Federation is quoted as saying:

The evidence that this will actually stop young people smoking just isn’t there
John Drummond, Scottish Grocers’ Federation

Good grief, man. When did we start to need evidence about such obvious measures? Out of sight, out of mind, anyone? I think it’s a fantastic piece of legislation, but I hope just the start. In some parts of America, where smoking has been banned in public places for some time, smokers are looked on with disdain, and perhaps a bit of pity; in the UK we’re still making jokes about smokers standing out in the rain…

Dropping smoking rates might put me out of a job, but it’ll take 20 years, so my pension is safe. I jest – I would be overjoyed if every smoker in the country stopped today, and lung cancer all but disappeared from routine medical practice. I’m sure the cardiologists feel the same about ischaemic heart disease.

Scotland certainly leads the rest of the UK in this, I’m not sure about the rest of Europe…..