Piano Blues

As Britain celebrates not having to sell the family piano to pay the doctor’s leg-breaking fees, Maurice Gueret examines a novel way to play mother’s tune

Welsh Nurse

Our British friends are gearing up to cut a cake for the National Health Service. The NHS will be 70 years old next July and already reporters have tracked down the first baby to be born free of charge after its launch. By happy coincidence, she’s a retired Welsh nurse called Aneira Thomas. She was named by her mother in tribute to Aneurin Bevan, the minister credited with delivering cradle-to-grave healthcare that’s free of charge for everyone. Prior to Aneira’s birth, her mother had to pay a shilling and sixpence to the midwife for each of her other six deliveries. Once, when the father of the family broke his leg and needed a doctor to set it on the dining-room table, they had to sell the piano to pay his fees. Rampant medical inflation and ongoing political uncertainty are the big threats to today’s NHS. Unless they find some other way to meet or reduce bills, next year’s 70 birthday candles may be the last.

Men’s Health

With elections on the horizon, Irish men need to come out of their sheds and start asking politicians some serious questions. The news that Waterford men are now waiting up to nine years for urology appointments is beyond a national joke. Women with bladder or kidney symptoms may also be waiting nine years, but prostate diseases are peculiar to the male species, and constitute a huge part of any urologist’s workload. The news that each urologist in Waterford (there are two) has one-quarter of a million potential patients shows us why the wait is so long. The United Kingdom has well over 1,040 consultants in this field. In our public service, we have less than 40. Improving breast, maternity and gynaecological services for women has been a lofty focus for a very long time in the Irish health service. But a nine-year urology wait suggests that it may have been at the expense of men.

Demented Donald

American doctors have been warned about commenting on their President without having first examined him. But others are free to diagnose. British writer Martin Amis, who lives in New York, has joined the fray by raising the possibility that Donald has dementia. He compared Trump’s flailing public performances with sharper chat show interviews he gave in the past and charts a horrific mental decline. Amis said there was even a time when Trump could use a word like chagrin correctly. In August, a former Republic strategist suggested that early-onset dementia may be the only defensible explanation for some of Trump’s behaviour. A Democrat in the House of Representatives has proposed an 11-member commission made up of doctors and psychiatrists to carry out a medical examination to determine whether the President is up to the job. Medics have a very useful screening tool for early signs of dementia. You simply ask: “Who is the President of the United States of America?” If the subject answers, ‘That’s me, Doc,’ there’s often a very strong case for impeachment.

Initial Danger

Medical acronyms are causing me trouble again. I was reading some correspondence the other day and came across a claim that Ireland had a very good MMR. Of course we do, thought I. This children’s vaccine has prevented thousands of cases of measles, mumps and rubella since its introduction nearly 30 years ago. Then it dawned on me that the doctor was using MMR to describe our maternal mortality rate — that’s the number of mothers who die in pregnancy, childbirth or shortly afterwards. Yes, we do have a very good MMR in that sense too — a very low figure by international standards. But the chances of confusion are high if we keep using interchangeable shortcuts.

Nobel Parody

Doctors are a funny breed. Many couldn’t tell you who won the Nobel prize in medicine for any of the last 10 years, but ask them who or what won an Ig Nobel prize and they’ll be well able to share a laugh. The annual Ig Nobels are for scientists who pursue trivia. This year an English GP won the anatomy prize for research over 25 years into why older men have bigger ears. The obstetrics prize went to a team of Spanish fertility doctors who showed that babies respond more strongly to music played inside a mother’s vagina than to tunes played on her belly. A tiny device called a Babypod is the resulting brainchild.