The BMJ Podcast

This week, we’re asking questions about surgisphere data, and how it might have got into such high impact journals, we’re also talking about the protests around the world about structural racism - and how they intersect with the covid pandemic.

(1.39) Helen and Carl talk about the data underlying the newly retracted papers on hydroxychloroquine and ace-inhibitors or ARBs and covid.

(7.45) Fiona Godlee, the BMJ’s editor in chief, comes onto the pod to talk about retractions, and why they’re often called for, an rarely done.

(25.10) We talk about the protests, and Carl gives us his opinion on the risk of covid transmission during them (spoiler; he thinks it’s low)

(37.40) Sonia Saxena, professor of primary care at Imperial College London gives her verdict on the Public Health England report into this disproportionate effect of covid on ethnic minorities in the UK, and pushes back against it being a biological instead of a sociological determination.

Reading list:

Sonia’s analysis into transforming the health system for the UK’s multiethnic population https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m268

 News Analysis - Covid-19: PHE review has failed ethnic minorities, leaders tell BMJ

https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2264

The PHE report into the disparate risk of covid to ethnic minorities

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-review-of-disparities-in-risks-and-outcomes

How might Burmese Buddhism help deal with pandemic stress? Christopher Bu drew on his familial heritage and the tradition of practicing mindfulness to cope with the stresses of studying to be a doctor. He invites us to consider how the same techniques might be useful psychological tool for all healthcare workers during this challenging time.

In this episode of Talk Evidence, we'll be finding out if second waves are inevitable (or even a thing), how the UK's failure to protect it's care homes is symbolic of a neglected part of public life, and why those papers on hydroxychloroquine were retracted.

This is Talk Evidence - the podcast for evidence based medicine, where research, guidance and practice are debated and demystified.

Helen Macdonald, UK research editor for The BMJ, and Carl Heneghan, professor of EBM at the University of Oxford and editor of BMJ EBM, talk about some of the latest developments in the world of evidence, and what they mean.

This week:

2.00 - Helen looking into a second wave - and finds out from Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist with the Cochrane Collaboration's acute respiratory infections group, that a "wave" might be a misnomer.

12.00 - Mary Daly, professor of sociology and social policy at the University of Oxford, tells us where the UK went wrong with care homes, and what we’d need to do to stop it happening again.

31.20 - Carl and Helen discuss those hydroxy chloroquine papers, now retracted. This was recorded before that happened, but we decided to keep this section in, because they talk about the reasons the papers should be viewed with caution, and the importance of scrutiny of the data.

Reading list:

The talk from Mary Daly at Green Templeton College.

https://www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/event/covid-19-and-care-homes-what-went-wrong-and-why/

The Trump administration was left a playbook for pandemics when they entered the Whitehouse, but even before covid-19 was a threat systematically dismantled the public health protections put in place to follow that playbook.

In this podcast, Nicole Lurie, Gavin Yamey and Gregg Gonsalves talk about how the US response to public health was mismanaged, how it has become politicized, and what that playbook suggested should have been done. They also talk about rebuilding public health in the US after this is all over.

Our guests;

Nicole Lurie, former Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response under the Obama administration, senior clinical lecturer at Harvard Medical School and advisor to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation

Gavin Yamey, professor of global health and public policy at Duke University

Gregg Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health.

This podcast is hosted by Joanne Silberner.

For GPs, testing patients is their “bread and butter”. This week, we discuss the “better safe than sorry” attitude towards testing, which is so common among doctors – are we guilty of over-testing purely out of force of habit, or are we worried about missing something vital, and therefore find reassurance in doing them? How should we interpret test results, and how do these results affect the way we manage our patients? And, with the huge focus on COVID-19 testing in the media, how do we communicate the current risks and uncertainties surrounding it to our patients?

Our guests:

James McCormack is a professor in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and the co-host of a popular weekly podcast called Best Science (BS) Medicine podcast. His work focuses on helping healthcare professionals to understand medical data, by taking the best available evidence and making it as simple and practical as possible.

Jess Watson is a GP, working in Bristol, and an expert on medical testing. She is a researcher with an interest in the use of diagnostic tests in primary care, specifically inflammatory marker blood tests.

Reading list:

James's BS Medicine Podcast

https://therapeuticseducation.org/

Jess's Practice Pointer - Interpreting a covid-19 test result

https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1808

That remdesivir study has finally been published - what does it say and is it as independant as claimed. Also, as the world's focus turned to covid, so have researchers - and they've produced over 15000 papers. How can we sift through the flood of research and know what's any good?

(2.30) Helen Macdonald talks to Elizabeth Loder about the volume of research we're seeing, and why journals and peer reviewers are struggling to check it all.

(8.15) The study on remdesivir has been published - the trial was stopped early, and the primary outcome switched - we talk about how that increases uncertainty over the results, and could actually delay the treatment.

(26.50) We hear from a couple fo readers who wanted to correct us about averages, means, medians.

Reading list:

The US NIH AID study on remdesivir, published 22nd May in the New England Journal of Medicine

Research - preliminary report https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007764

NEJM - looking at the dose duration https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2015301

Editorial - an important first step https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2018715

*Non covid content alert*

While the last couple of months have been covid-19 focused, the work of the beforetimes carries on - including a topic the BMJ is perennially interested in, industry funding of medics.

Ray Moynihan, researcher at Bond University, has been looking at financial ties between some healthcare association leaders, and industry, in the US, and reports that in new research published this week in The BMJ.

Read the full open access research;

Financial ties between leaders of influential US professional medical associations and industry: cross sectional study - https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1505

How might stress affect your performance as a healthcare worker?

That’s the question that Mark Stacey, a consultant obstetric anaesthetist in Cardiff, has been interested in for the past 10 years. He saw similarities in the aviation industry, which uses a theory of human factors to explain why things go wrong when humans interact with complex systems.

Stress was a major culprit, in both aerospace and medicine, so he began to explore wellbeing as a way to reduce stress and, in turn, reduce adverse events. He has developed the idea of writing yourself a wellbeing prescription, which includes practical techniques such as the Baker’s Dozen and a gratitude diary.

Useful tools

Bakers Dozen https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/808950/Bakers-Dozen-Toolkit.pdf

A 30 day plan that Mark has put together http://www.cardiffandvaleuhb.wales.nhs.uk/improving-resilience-in-anaesthesia

This last week has seen questions raised about the integrity of some of the epidemiological data being produced by US states, and as rates continue to grow in some countries international comparisons are being questioned.

To discuss the implication of that are;

Sridhar Venkatapuram

associate professor global health & philosophy at King's College London

Kathleen Bachynski

Assistant professor of public health at Muhlenberg College

Martin Mckee

Professor of European health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

This week we're focussing on what kind of information we need to be able to collect and use as the country transitions out of lockdown - and why local lockdowns may be here for some time.

We also hear about the new antibody tests which are available in the UK - are they actually a game changer?

(2.00) Helen explains what some new evidence says about hydroxychloroquine (spoiler; don’t take it for covid-19)

(6.40) *Non covid alert* - Carl tells us about new research on compressions stockings for thromboprophylaxis, and the importance of doing research on non-pharmacological interventions

(10.30) David Nabarro, Special Envoy of WHO Director-General on COVID19,

(28.00) Helen goes back to Jon Deeks, professor of biostatistics at Birmingham, to find out more about these “accurate” tests for covid, endorsed by the government this week.

Reading list:

Clinical efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in patients with covid-19

https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1844

Hydroxychloroquine in patients with mainly mild to moderate covid-19

https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1849

David Nabarro’s website, with daily briefings

https://www.4sd.info/

News Covid-19: Two antibody tests are “highly specific” but vary in sensitivity, evaluations find

https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2066