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Health Check: 21/09/2011

21/09/2011

BBC World Service - Health Check, 21/09/2011

Using diaries to help avoid the trauma of frightening hallucinations in intensive care

Using diaries to help avoid trauma after intensive care; The licensing effect of supplements on smoking; Can you tell the sex of a baby by the bump?; Predicting dengue fever outbreaks in Costa Rica.

INTENSIVE CARE UNITS PSYCHOSIS
Intensive care units undoubtedly save many lives every year, however unfortunately some people can experience hallucinations whilst they are there. This strange phenomenon is well known amongst doctors, but less so more generally. Hallucinations can be so intense that it can leave patients with traumatic memories or in extreme cases post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Between 15% and 30% of people who have stayed in intensive care have symptoms of PTSD a year later. It seems to be related to their experiences in hospital rather than to the accident or illness that brought them there. To try to alleviate the problem, Christina Jones, a nurse consultant in critical care rehabilitation at Whiston Hospital in Prescot, has introduced the idea of diaries. These are written by the staff detailing the patients’ stay and the idea is to help them make sense of their time there. It has been trialled in 12 hospitals in six different European countries. Health Check also hears from Gillian, who Claudia Hammond met some years ago after she had spent four weeks in intensive care when she had pneumonia.

SMOKING AND MULTIVITAMINS
If you are a smoker, have you ever tried to convince yourself that taking vitamin pills might somehow make up for the damage that smoking causes? Dr Wen-Bin Chiou, a psychologist at National Sun Yat-Sen University in Taiwan has an older brother who is a heavy smoker and this got him wondering whether smokers who take vitamin supplements might feel this gives them a licence to smoke and even end up smoking more. The evidence regarding vitamins and cancer is mixed and it is clear that cutting down on cigarettes does more for your health than taking vitamin pills. To find out whether taking vitamins does make people feel that it is okay to smoke more, Wen-Bin Chu recruited smokers who were trying to give up and told them he was doing a health food study. 

BABY BUMPS
If you’re pregnant can you tell the sex of the baby from the shape of bump? Is it a neat netball for a boy and more spread out all round for a girl? Or is it the other way round? Professor Patrick O’Brien, a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at University College London Hospital, sets the record straight.

PREDICTING DENGUE FEVER OUTBREAKS
Dengue fever was largely eliminated from Central America in the 1960s. However as travel between countries increased, by the 1990s the mosquitoes which carry dengue were back, and in Costa Rica for example, new cases were diagnosed once more in 1993. Efforts to tackle the problem are increasing again and include trying to find ways of predicting outbreaks of dengue fever by looking at extreme weather events. At the University of Costa Rica, Claudia Hammond met Adriana Troyo, Associate Professor of Medical Entomology and Epidemiology. She has been working with colleagues at the University of Miami using mathematical and statistical climate-based models.

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