Livberpool Care Pathway

Experts are again speaking out to demand the highest possible level of supervision for patients on the Liverpool Care Pathway.

Under the pathway patients can be denied water or nutrition, may be heavily sedated, denied treatment to prolong life and not be given unecessary tests or treatment. The pathway was designed in the 1990's to ease the distress of the last hours of the dying patient and presently requires only one duty doctor to approve it's use.

Twenty bodies including Royal College of Practioners, Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of Nursing, Age UK and the Alzheimer's Society are now calling for a change to be made whereby at least two medical staff, one of whom should be the most senior on duty should assess the patients. Help should be sought from all staff involved in the patients care as it is not always easy to to tell whether someone is very close to death. They also added people should be involved in decisions about their care and families and carers should be included in the decision making.

Sedative Addiction

More than a million patients are taking potentially harmful tranquillisers.
Some patients have been taking them for more than 20 years. Psychiatrists say that some patients are often begging for repeat prescriptions or buying them from illegal websites.

Benzodiazepines, which include temazepam and diazepam have also been found to increase the risk of dementia by 50 per cent even when taken for short periods.

Guidlines say that benzodiazepines should only be used for the maxium of one month many users are becoming dependent.

Failing Hip Implants for Women

Surgeons have warned that women should no longer be offered hip resurfacing because failure rates are unacceptably high.

Women who have had hip resurfacing are up to five times more likely to need a second operation and one in ten suffer further problems including pain and infection.

Resurfacing is offered as an alternative to hip replacement for younger people and involves placing metal caps into the hip socket whereas hip replacement involves fitting a new joint made from either ceramic, metal, or plastic.

Research published in the Lancet medical journal found that the smaller head sizes used for women were linked to higher failure rates.