On December 1st, 2017, the cervical screening program in Australia applied some changes. These included: increasing the gap between screening tests from 2-yearly to 5-yearly, increasing the starting age of testing women from 18-20 to age 25, changing the test from a Pap smear [...]
Benzodiazepine use in older adults has been associated with a number of harms, including greater risk of falls, hip fracture, impaired cognition, substance abuse disorder, and overdose. This study was thus interested in annual trends in benzodiazepine incidence and prevalence in older adults between 2010 [...]
This qualitative study investigated experiences of cascade genetic testing for heart disease (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy), focusing on a new and growing group of “silent gene carriers” who may never develop symptoms. Most people decided to get the genetic test to rule out the disease or [...]
High-sensitivity troponin is a blood test used to diagnose heart attacks, or myocardial infarction. It was developed to address the problem of high variability in a previous version of the test. High-sensitivity troponin illustrates how new diagnostic tests often change who is diagnosed with [...]
A systematic review of reports of interventions to reduce unnecessary imaging and pathology testing in paediatric populations in developed countries written in English and published between January 1, 1996, and April 29, 2017 was conducted. 64 articles were identified including 44 before-after, 14 interrupted [...]
For decades, persuasive techniques have been used to communicate to women about breast cancer screening with the aim of maximizing screening uptake. However, more recently this has shifted to an approach which recognizes that it is important for women to be aware of harms, [...]
Despite good evidence over the past 14 years demonstrating that knee arthroscopy provides no benefit to people with knee osteoarthritis, there has not been a consistent reduction in knee arthroscopy rates over this time. This study looked at the information that is available online [...]
The EVOLVE ‘evaluating evidence, enhancing efficiencies’ initiative is a clinician-led partnership between the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and its specialist societies. Modelled on international Choosing Wisely initiatives, it aims to identify a ‘top five’ list of low value clinical practices that clinicians and [...]
We reviewed the reliability of online heart disease risk calculators and the increasing popularity of “heart age” calculators, which assess 4 out of 5 people as having an older heart age than their current age. The papers explain how these calculations are highly variable [...]
The large number of men screened for prostate cancer in some countries, and the extent of public misperception and scientific contention about the PSA test, makes communication between men and their GPs about PSA screening especially important. But communicating about screening is difficult. Professional [...]