Tag Archives: BMJ Podcasts

Neurology: What Are Cluster Headaches? (BMJ)

The prevalence of cluster headache is about one in 500. In people coming to a headache clinic, the prevalence is about 10%.

Cluster headaches are excruciating and incapacitating, and affect quality of life. Prompt diagnosis and treatment can make a big difference to the outcome – so it is vital that we get the diagnosis and management of this condition right.

In this BMJ Best Practice podcast on cluster headache, Kieran Walsh talks with Professor Amaal Starling, Associate Professor of Neurology at the Department of Neurology in the Mayo Clinic.

Further resources: clusterbusters.org/.

Conditions: Diagnosis & Care Of Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis. It is more common in women than in men, with incidence increasing sharply around the age of 50.

January 30, 2023 – And it can cause complications – including the inability to perform activities of daily living and spinal stenosis in cervical and lumbar osteoarthritis.

So it is vital that we get the diagnosis and management of this condition right. In this BMJ Best Practice podcast on osteoarthritis, Kieran Walsh talks to Fadi Badlissi, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Musculoskeletal Medicine Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. 

BMJ Podcast: Diagnosis & Management Of Heart Failure – Dr. Carolyn Lam

In this episode of the Heart podcast, Digital Media Editor, Dr James Rudd, is joined by Professor Carolyn Lam, a world expert in heart failure from the University of Singapore and the National Heart Centre, also in Singapore.

They discuss updates in the diagnosis and management of heart failure, including wearables, biomarkers, the 4 pillars of therapy, and how and why there has historically been an under-representation of women in heart failure trials. This episode is sponsored by an educational grant from the Boehringer Ingelheim-Lilly Alliance. The sponsor has no influence over podcast content, the selection of speakers or any associated educational material.

Professor Carolyn Lam is a Senior Consultant from the Department of Cardiology and Director of Women’s Heart Health at the National Heart Centre Singapore, having pioneered the first Women’s Heart Clinic in Singapore.  Academically, she serves as a tenured Full Professor at the Duke-National University of Singapore, having also graduated from the Standford Executive Programme in 2015, and obtained a PhD at the University Medical Centre Groningen, the Netherlands in 2016. In the field of MedTech, Prof Lam is co-founder of Us2.ai, an award-wining startup dedicated to the automation of the fight against heart disease by applying artificial intelligence to echocardiography (ultrasound of the heart). 

Prof Lam is a world-renowned specialist in heart failure (particularly heart failure with preserved ejection fraction [HFpEF]). Her work in the PARAGON-HF and EMPEROR-Preserved trials led to the first FDA-approved treatment for HFpEF and the first robustly positive clinical outcomes trial in HFpEF to-date, respectively. She leads several multinational global and regional clinical trials, and has received numerous prestigious awards and global recognition for her work. Her recent appointments on the 2021 European Society of Cardiology Heart Failure Guidelines Task Force, and as International Honorary Fellow of the Heart Failure Society of America 2021, attest to her contributions in both cardiology and research fields. 

Prof Lam is a proud recipient of the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Senior Investigator Clinician Scientist Award in 2020, and served as the Founding Programme Lead of A*STaR’s Asian neTwork for Translational Research and Cardiovascular Trials (ATTRaCT) and Principal Investigator of ASIAN-HF (a multinational study across 11 Asian countries). In 2019, She initiated the Asian Diabetes Outcomes Prevention Trial (ADOPT), an ongoing trial involving 5 countries and aimed at reducing the cardiovascular adverse outcomes of diabetes in Asian patients.

She has published with over 350 articles in major high impact journals including New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Lancet, Circulation, and European Heart Journal; and has been recognised as a World Expert by Expertscape’s PubMed-based algorithms (top 0.1% of scholars writing about Heart Failure over the past 10 years; Heart Failure: Worldwide – Expertscape.com). Besides being an Associate Editor for Circulation (top Cardiology Journal) and European Journal of Heart Failure, she is also the lead author of the chapter on HFpEF for Braunwald’s Heart Disease: A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine, 12th Edition – the award-winning textbook trusted by generations of cardiologists for the latest, most reliable guidance in the field.

MEDICINE: ‘DIABETES’ – RISKS & DIAGNOSIS (BMJ PODCAST)

In this episode of the JIM Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Richard McCallum speaks with David Cistola of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso about American Diabetes Month.

TOP MEDICAL PODCASTS: ‘DIVERTICULAR DISEASE’ (BMJ)

Colonic diverticulosis refers to herniation of the mucosa and submucosa through the muscular layer of the colonic wall and may be the result of colonic smooth muscle over-activity. Diverticular disease may be defined as any clinical state caused by symptoms pertaining to colonic diverticula and includes a wide-ranging spectrum from asymptomatic to severe and complicated disease. 

Mohamed Thaha, Senior Lecturer & Lead Consultant in Colorectal Surgery, National Bowel Research Centre, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, tells us more. 

Read more

CARDIOLOGY PODCAST: “ATRIAL FIBRILLATION – A COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW”

Atrial fibrillation is chaotic and irregular atrial arrhythmia, the prevalence of which increases progressively with age. It causes significant morbidity and death. Many patients are asymptomatic or have symptoms that are less specific for cardiac arrhythmias, such as mild dementia or silent strokes. 

Gregory Lip, Price-Evans Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Liverpool, gives us an overview of the condition.

Read more on Atrial Fibrillation at BMJ