Medicine Canada

"I remember just standing there in disbelief … and the initial confusion very quickly turned to rage," said Bordignon, who works as a police officer.

"I'm no fool, I've seen autopsies performed, they are not pretty … it was soul-crushing and just wrong.... It's just like, okay, so if this is an itemized list, this means the autopsy has been done. Where is she?"

CBC News has learned that the Bordignons' concerns about both the invoice and the delay in releasing Makayla's body are now under investigation by B.C.'s Patient Care Quality Review Board — the body tasked with reviewing complaints about health authority policies and procedure.

The story highlights what experts say is a lack of standardized care when it comes to stillbirths, which can result in errors that traumatize already grieving families.

For context:

Canada Health Infoway is an independent, federally funded, not-for-profit organization tasked with accelerating the adoption of digital health solutions, such as electronic health records, across Canada

These are the vendors that they have chosen for an AI scribe program, which "provides up to 10,000 fully funded, one-year licenses for AI-powered documentation tools to eligible primary care clinicians across Canada" and notes that "rigorous evaluation criteria included vendor capabilities, privacy, cybersecurity, EMR integration, and clinical usability".

There is more information on the website

It’s a paradox that has bedevilled health-system planners in Canada for years: Why, as the number of family doctors per capita grew, did it become more difficult to find one?

The answer lies in how physicians trained in family medicine practise today, according to a new study based on 30 years of Ontario Health Insurance Plan billing data.

From The Globe and Mail via this RSS feed

Provincial governments should pay for the weight-loss drug Wegovy for people who are overweight and have survived a heart attack or stroke, according to a new report from the organization that advises Canadian public drug plans on which new medications to cover.

Canada’s Drug Agency, which released the draft recommendation on Thursday, said taxpayer-funded drug plans should reimburse Wegovy for people with a body mass index of 27 or higher and pre-existing cardiovascular disease because a clinical trial found the once-weekly injection cut their risk of another heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular death by 20 per cent.

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Canada has seen more cases of the measles this year than at any time since the wildly contagious disease was eliminated here in 1998, a resurgence experts chalk up to falling vaccination rates.

Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, has for years warned of the dangers of the anti-vaccine movement. Dr. Hotez, whose latest book is The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science, is in Winnipeg this week. He spoke with health reporter Kelly Grant about measles, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and whether he would ever consider leaving the United States.

Ontario reports 200 new measles cases as province struggles to contain outbreak

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The federal election campaign has so far focused on cost of living and the trade war. Health care – an issue that touches the lives of every Canadian – was notably absent from the leaders’ debates, although the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP have made a number of promises on that front in recent days, including to add more family doctors.

Last week, The Globe and Mail hosted a webcast panel – Election 2025: Steps to heal Canada’s health care system –to discuss the current landscape, possible solutions and what to look for when casting your vote on April 28.

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The last type of chemotherapy that David Easton tried in his five-year fight against prostate cancer left him living a life that was really no life at all.

The retired Ontario autoworker slept 20 hours a day. His little time awake was spent hunched on or over the toilet at his home in Ayton, a small community about two hoursnorthwest of Toronto.

From The Globe and Mail via this RSS feed

The last type of chemotherapy that David Easton tried in his five-year fight against prostate cancer left him living a life that was really no life at all.

The retired Ontario autoworker slept 20 hours a day. His little time awake was spent hunched on or over the toilet at his home in Ayton, a small community about two hours northwest of Toronto.

He and his wife, Ann Easton, decided in February of 2024 that he would stop chemotherapy, even though he had exhausted all other treatments and very much wanted to live.

Then, about a year later, Mr. Easton was presented with a new option: a radioactive drug delivered by IV that would target his cancer and spare his healthy cells, unlike chemotherapy. “The nurse said that chemo was like being hit with a sledgehammer,” Ms. Easton said, “and this stuff is like being tickled with a feather.”

The only catch was that the 73-year-old would have to limit time with his wife and grandchildren for a few days after the drug was injected into his bloodstream because he would be radioactive.

The radiopharmaceutical that Mr. Easton received at London Health Sciences Centre on March 20 is called Pluvicto, and it is part of a new class of treatments that proponents predict will soon be a fourth pillar of cancer care, alongside surgery, chemotherapy and traditional radiation.

Good morning. Plenty has changed in the treatment of obesity since experts last published advice on caring for young people with the chronic disease in 2007. More on that below, along with election campaign updates and Katy Perry in outer space.

Today’s headlines

U.S. President Donald Trump muses about tariff relief for automakers and begins the process for semiconductor and pharmaceutical leviesFormer hockey player Chris Simon has been posthumously diagnosed with CTE, and the NHL says there’s no proven link between the twoConservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pledges to use the notwithstanding clause to allow longer sentences for multiple murderers

From The Globe and Mail via this RSS feed

Doctors caring for young people with obesity should provide nutritionaland exercise advice, but should also consider offering weight-loss drugs and bariatric surgery to teenagers, according to the first new Canadian guideline on the treatment of pediatric obesity in nearly 20 years.

The clinical practice guideline, which provides advice to doctors on how to treat children with obesity, was published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. It features 10 recommendations, including one in favour of GLP-1 receptor agonists, the class of drugs that contains semaglutide, better known as the Type 2 diabetes medication Ozempic.

From The Globe and Mail via this RSS feed

cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/147336

A Michigan patient died of rabies earlier this year after contracting the virus through an organ transplant, health officials said.

[...]

“There is no threat to the general public. Health officials worked together to ensure that people, including health care providers, who were in contact with the Michigan individual were assessed for possible exposure to rabies,” a spokesperson for the Michigan health department told Global News in a Thursday email.

While organ screening is done for common diseases like HIV, hepatitis B and C and syphilis, they are not routinely tested for rabies before transplantation, according to the CDC.

Since rabies is extremely rare, standard donor screening prioritizes more common infections and conditions that could impact transplant recipients.

“If rabies is not clinically suspected, laboratory testing for rabies is not routinely performed, as it is difficult for doctors to confirm results in the short window of time they have to keep the organs viable for the recipient,” the CDC stated.

What about in Canada?

Testing for disease in organs is performed at the provincial program level following Canadian standards and regulations.

Health Canada’s Guidance on the Safety of Human Cells, Tissues, and Organs for Transplantation Regulations outlines the list of infectious diseases that are tested for in organ donations.

Diseases include HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis and toxoplasmosis.

Rabies is not included on the list.

Global News reached out to Health Canada to confirm that rabies is not tested before organ donation, but did not hear back by the time of publication.