Jun 29, 2018 | Discoveries & Breakthroughs
Nearly all of us know at least one person that has diabetes. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that over 382 million people worldwide currently have diabetes. Diabetes prevents the body from effectively converting carbohydrates in food into energy,...
Dec 15, 2017 | Discoveries & Breakthroughs
I sometimes take antibiotics for granted. As a doctor, I have prescribed thousands of courses of antibiotics throughout my career. I have taken many courses myself also, and they almost certainly saved my life when I perforated my appendix in my mid-20s. Antibiotics...
Jul 28, 2017 | Discoveries & Breakthroughs
The tendon hammer is one of the most historically resilient medical instruments still in use today. It is a simple yet invaluable device that can be used to diagnose a wide variety of nervous system and muscular disorders. Almost 130 years after the invention of the...
Jun 15, 2017 | Discoveries & Breakthroughs
Do you ever feel like you are going round in circles? Well, your blood is continuously going round in circles, in the pulmonary and systemic circulations. Less than 400 years ago, however, these life-giving, life-sustaining circles were not known about. The heart was...
May 9, 2017 | Discoveries & Breakthroughs
ECG interpretation has long been a guilty pleasure of mine. One of the first books I purchased as a medical student was the ‘ECG Made Easy’. After reading that book for the first time ECG interpretation seemed far from easy and I didn’t develop a strong grasp of...
Sep 20, 2016 | Discoveries & Breakthroughs
No single piece of equipment is more synonymous with the medical profession than the stethoscope. I can vividly remember wearing my brand new Littmann stethoscope with pride on ward rounds as a medical student, desperately trying to discern diastolic murmurs and extra...
