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| | | CASE NOTES
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| | | Dr Mark Porter gives listeners the low-down on what the medical profession does and doesn't know. Each week an expert in the studio tackles a particular topic and there are reports from around the UK on the health of the nation - and the NHS.
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|  | | | | "I spend half my week practising medicine and the other half writing and talking about it as a GP in Gloucestershire. Working on Case Notes has been a boon for both me and my patients. One of the principal aims of the programme is to keep our listeners up-to-date with the latest developments in healthcare, and to accomplish that I get to interview a wide range of specialists at the cutting edge of medicine. A rare privilege that ensures our listeners aren't the only ones to learn something new."
Mark Porter | | | | |
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 Full programme transcript >>
Antibiotics and Probiotics
In this episode of Case Notes, Dr Mark Porter reports on the new guidelines for prescribing antibiotics, and also asks whether it's possible to take too many probiotics.
Antibiotics
GPs issue 35 million prescriptions for antibiotics every year. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE, has stepped in to try to do something about this figure, which is felt to be much too high.
They have stated that antibiotics should not be offered to anyone with an upper respiratory infection, meaning that many people who go to see with GP with a cold or cough are likely to be turned away empty-handed, as antibiotics won't help them.
Mark speaks to Professor Paul Little, a GP and chair of the group that came up with the new guidance, about what patients and doctors can expect.
He explains that viral infections take much longer to recover from than many people appreciate, and it's rest and time which are needed, not antibiotics.
Probiotics
Mark speaks to Chakravarthi Rajkumar, Professor of Geriatrics and Stroke Medicine at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, who has a special interest in the use of probiotics to reduce some of the unwanted side effects of antibiotics in his elderly patients.
And Marnie Chesterton reports from Utrect in the Netherlands, where trials using probiotics on patients with severe acute pancreatitis had some worrying results.
Next week: cot death | | |
RELATED LINKS
NICE: Use of antibiotics for respiratory tract infections in adults and children (pdf)
Patient UK: Why No Antibiotic?
BBC Health: Probiotics
NHS Direct
NetDoctor
Dr Foster
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