Daily digest 17 June 2015

Nurses left man to die because of previous patient’s DNR notice

Hospital staff left a grandfather to die after wrongly following a ‘do not resuscitate’ order intended for the previous occupier of his bed, the Daily Mail has reported.

They did not try to revive the pensioner when he stopped breathing, believing they were following his family’s instructions.

Staff made the mistake because handover documentation had not been updated between shifts. An investigation found that the senior nurse on duty should have checked the patient’s file instead of ‘presuming’ the handover paperwork was correct.

The man in his 70s, who has not been named, died on January 28 at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester and University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust has admitted a string of errors.

Read more on the Mail Online website

Women advised to freeze their eggs by 35

Women should be advised to have in vitro fertilisation (IVF) with donor eggs instead of their own when they reach the age of 44 to boost their chances of success, fertility doctors have said.

Researchers in Spain found that the chances of women having a baby through IVF was only 1.3% in those aged 44 and above, but stood at 24% in those aged 38 to 39, the Guardian has reported.

Dr Marta Devesa, a doctor at the Hospital Universitari Quirón-Dexeus in Barcelona, Spain, said the dramatic decline in live births could be avoided if older women froze their eggs by the time they reached 35, or used donor eggs, which come from younger women.

Read more on the Guardian website

Patients lack trust in doctors over drug safety

The safety of statins and other common medicines is to be questioned by an independent review amid concerns that doctors and medical scientists are regarded as ‘untrustworthy’.

As reported in the Times, Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, has invited a fresh analysis of the evidence to cut through widespread confusion and mistrust surrounding many drugs.

She said that some patients believed that some doctors were ‘difficult to trust’ because of a tendency to prescribe medicines too freely, while scientists were similarly distrusted because of funding from the pharmaceutical industry.

(£) Read more on the Times website

Keyhole knee surgery is ineffective and potentially harmful

Keyhole knee surgery should be phased out because it does little good and could even kill patients, a study has shown.

The benefit of surgery for middle-aged or older patients with persistent knee pain is inconsequential and potentially harmful, say researchers in a study published in the BMJ.

As reported in the Daily Telegraph, more than 150,000 operations take place each year on middle-aged and older adults yet there is little scientific evidence to show that it improves movement or lessens pain. Exercise or physiotherapy is likely to be just as effective, the researchers argue.

Read more on the Telegraph website