Being told you may not be able to have children can be devastating news. Now Sydney researchers believe many women are being diagnosed with a common disorder linked to infertility when they may be perfectly healthy.
Polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, is associated with weight gain, irregular periods, skin problems, and signs of excessive male hormones. PCOS is often thought of as being under-diagnosed — but a new study of Australian doctors has found that many are concerned it is, in [...]
Clinicians tend to think of diseases as being immutable, existing in nature like elements of the periodic table or the planets. The medical literature reinforces this myth, implying that changes are a result of increasing scientific knowledge moving medicine toward better and more accurate descriptions [...]
A controversial new study claims about one in every five cancers diagnosed in Australia would have been better left undiscovered. The study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia on Monday, argues more than half of melanomas, 22 per cent of breast cancers and 42 [...]
Breast cancer screening has been presented to women as mostly positive for decades, despite voices raising issues related to harms since its introduction. Public communications about breast cancer screening tended to use persuasive techniques aimed at maximizing uptake. Concern about the harm of overdetection is [...]
Prof Paul Glasziou speaks on Channel 7's Sunrise program about overdiagnosis in cancer following the release of his MJA paper estimating the magnitude of cancer overdiagnosis in Australia
We estimated that overdiagnosis accounted for about 18% of cancer diagnoses in women in Australia during 2012, and about 24% of diagnoses in men. That is, about 11 000 cancers in women and 18 000 in men may be overdiagnosed each year. Although proportional rates of overdiagnosis [...]
Professor Rachelle Buchbinder was made an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to medical education in the fields of epidemiology and rheumatology, and to professional associations.
Many GPs who in 2018 received Health Department letters regarding their opioid prescribing criticised the strategy to stem over-prescribing, saying it unfairly targeted doctors who had legitimate reasons to prescribe opioids, such as those working in palliative care. The appropriateness of these letters is now being looked [...]
In this Therapeutics article, we present an overview of the evidence on safety and effectiveness of paracetamol in adults for pain relief in primary care settings. We focus on immediate release preparations and discuss practical considerations for its use