Cochrane Library Podcasts

Diabetic macular oedema is a common complication of diabetes, in which damage to the blood vessels at the back of the eye leads to swelling. Lucentis, Eylea and Avastin are three antiangiogenic drugs that can be injected into the eye to treat these blood vessels and reduce the swelling; and drugs with longer lasting effects have recently become available, such as Vabysmo and Beovue. In June 2023, Katie Curran from Queen's University Belfast in the UK and colleagues, updated their Cochrane review of these drugs and used a network meta-analysis to compare their effects. Here’s Katie to tell us more.

Several Cochrane reviews look at the evidence on interventions that might be used for older people in long-term care settings and these include reviews on ways to prevent or reduce the use of interventions that might do more harm than good. Among these, the review of interventions for preventing and reducing the use of physical restraints was updated in July 2023. We asked lead author, Ralph Möhler of the University Hospital Düsseldorf in Germany, to tell us about physical restraints and the latest findings of the review in this podcast.

The Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group has produced many reviews of the role of nicotine replacement therapy in smoking cessation and, in June 2023, they updated their review of different doses, durations and modes of delivery. Here's first author, Annika Theodoulou from the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine at the University of Oxford in the UK to tell us about the latest findings.

Cochrane has produced around 40 systematic reviews of interventions that might help people after cardiac arrest. In this podcast, review author Nikola Schütz talks with lead author Jasmin Arrich, a consultant working at the emergency department at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, about the May 2023 update for one of these, looking at the effects of an intervention called therapeutic hypothermia or temperature control for patients who have been resuscitated after a cardiac arrest.

As the population ages, an increasing number of older people are living with frailty. A new Cochrane review from May 2023 looks at the evidence on the effects of case management for their integrated care. Here's one of the authors, Euan Sadler from the University of Southampton in the UK, to tell us about frailty and what they found.

The Cochrane Developmental, Psychosocial and Learning Problems Group has produced approximately 200 reviews, with several relevant to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. One of these reviews, on the effects of polyunsaturated fatty acids, was updated in April 2023. Here's lead author, Donna Gillies from the University of Sydney in Australia to tell us more.

The Cochrane Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care Group produced more than 300 reviews across a very wide range of topics. These include a review of the treatment of jelly fish stings, which was updated in June 2023. We asked lead author, Richard McGee from the Department of Paediatrics in Gosford Hospital in Australia to tell us more and he used an AI voice from elevenlabs.io to make the recording.

Back in October 1998, we published the first version of the Cochrane review of the effects of cranberry for preventing urinary tract infections. Nearly 25 years on, the fifth update was published in April 2023 and we asked lead author, Gabrielle Williams from University of Sydney in Australia to bring us up to date in this podcast.

The Cochrane Gut group have produced more than 220 reviews, including some that investigate treatments for Clostridioides difficile infection. These were added to in April 2023, with a new review of the use of fecal microbiota transplantation for the treatment of recurrent infection. Here's Zev Minkoff from Valley Children's Hospital in Madera in the USA to tell us more about the condition and this treatment.

As you can imagine, placing a breathing tube into a newborn baby is a particularly challenging task, and research has been done into different ways to do this. In May 2023, Mohan Pammi and co-reviewers from Baylor College of Medicine, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Boston Children's Hospital, updated the Cochrane review on comparing videolaryngoscopy to the traditional direct laryngoscopy approach and Mohan describes the latest findings in this podcast.