Francesca Conway, from the Department of Primary Care and Public Health at Imperial College London is co-author of an article on diagnosis of COPD. She joins us to discuss the major guideline recommendations, and highlights where they concur and where they differ. Read the full article: http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h6171

Despite what hollywood says, science has proven that British teeth are actually better than American. Richard Watt, head of the Research Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at UCL explains how they came to that conclusion. Read the full research: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/doi/10.1136/bmj.h6543

The claim that cancer screening saves lives is based on fewer deaths due to the target cancer. Vinay Prasad, assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University, joins us to argue that reductions in overall mortality should be the benchmark and call for higher standards of evidence for cancer screening. Read the full...

Around half of people aged over 75 meet the diagnostic criteria for chronic kidney disease (CKD), but there is debate about what this means for patients as only a proportion of elderly people with CKD will have clinically important outcomes as a result. In this podcast, Dr Arif Khwaja argues that for CKD in the elderly, we should focus on...

Iqbal Malik, consultant cardiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London, joins Mabel Chew to discuss the role of angioplasty and stenting in patients with stable angina. Read the full article online: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i205

How should health professionals engage with this increasingly popular but unproved practice? Aubrey Cunnington, a consultant paediatrician from Imperial College London joins us to discuss. Read the full editorial: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i227

“Juliet”, a woman living in London, was diagnosed with a mysterious illness in November 2015, Ian Cropley, a consultant in infectious disease from The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, was there to investigate. In this podcast, we find out how Zika, once a little known virus causing a rash and fever, has subsequently become a global health...

Nick Oliver, consultant diabetologist at Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust and Philippa Cooper, who has type I diabetes, join us to explain how structured education works for patients, and give tips on self management. Read the full review: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i998

However well intentioned, working in detention centres amounts to complicity in torture, says David Berger, a district medical officer in emergency medicine at Broome Hospital in Australia. However, Steven Miles, chair in bioethics at the University of Minnesota thinks that they play an important role in telling the world about conditions in...

As France has moved in recent weeks to clear camps where migrants stay while trying to cross illegally into Britain, Médecins Sans Frontières has just opened a new one. Sophie Arie talks to Caroline Gollé, medical coordinator at the Médecins Sans Frontières​ La Linière camp​. Read more about the camp: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i1696

Plan, do, study, act cycles, or PDSA cycles, are the basis of many quality improvement projects, they're a model to trial changes and feed the lessons from each test into the next. Why are they a popular method, and how do you get the best out of them? And what on earth happens when they explode? Harriet Vickers asks Julie Reed, National...

James Barrett, president of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists, and Nina, a trans woman, join us to discuss how difficult it can be for trans people to access gender clinics, and what barriers are faced by the community after their transition has been completed. Read James Barrett's personal...

In February World Health Organization (WHO) declared the microcephaly epidemic in South America an international public health emergency. Today, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, has confirmed that it’s is Zika virus which is causing that microcephaly.  The outbreak was originally spotted in Recife, in Brazil, and it’s...

The BMJ recently held a discussion between experts in the fields of general practice, emergency medicine, and paediatrics about the state of out of hours care in the UK, and crucially offered their vision for a better service. Are children a special case, can urgent care ‘hubs’ be a silver bullet, is NHS 111 up to the job of triaging patients,...

Medical error is not included on death certificates or in rankings of cause of death. Martin Makary, professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, joins us to explain why we don't measure medical error, and why it is so important that we start. Read the full analysis: http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139

Providing information to enable informed choices about healthcare sounds immediately appealing to most of us. But Minna Johansson, GP trainee and PhD student at the University of Gothenburg, argues that preventive medicine and expanding disease definitions have changed the ethical premises of informed choice and our good intentions may...

Travellers’ diarrhoea is one of the most common illnesses in people who travel internationally, and depending on destination affects 20-60% of the more than 800 million travellers each year. In most cases the diarrhoea occurs in people who travel to areas with poor food and water hygiene. Mike Brown, consultant in infectious diseases and tropical...

Katja Iversen, CEO of Women Deliver, joins Rebecca Coombes to explain why the UN sustainable development goals are unachievable if we don't empower women and girls to take control of their health, wellbeing, and reproductive rights. http://womendeliver.org/

We do we know about the weekend effect? As Martin McKee puts it in an editorial on thebmj.com, "almost nothing is clear in this tangled tale" In this roundtable, Navjoyt Ladher, Analysis editor for The BMJ is joined by some of the key academics who have published research and commented on the weekend effect to make sense of what we know and...

Interviews from the Women deliver conference in Copenhagen. Donna McCarraher, director of reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health at FHI 360, explains why women should be at the centre of efforts to mitigate the effect of Zika Virus in Brazil.

Interviews from the Women deliver conference in Copenhagen. Catrin Schulte-Hillen, co-ordinator of reproductive health and sexual violence care at Medecins Sans Frontieres, explains why the development community shouldn't conflate sexual violence and access to abortion.

How can asking patient to tell us their story improve healthcare? Helen Morant, content lead at BMJ, talks us through her project getting healthcare professionals to sit down with patients and record their conversations, and what on earth this has to do with quality improvement. We also hear some of the recordings she has gathered through the...

Global evidence indicates that mandated treatment of drug dependence conflicts with drug users’ human rights and is not effective in treating addiction. Karsten Lunze, associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, joins us to describe the evidence, and why he is convinced seemingly counter intuitive hard reduction...

Delirium is common in the last weeks or days of life. It can be distressing for patients and those around them. A clinical update explains why successful management involves excluding reversible causes of delirium and balancing drugs that may provoke or maintain delirium while appreciating that most patients want to retain clear cognition at the...

The same piece of evidence may reach you via a journalist, or via your doctor - but the way in which that evidence is communicated is changed by your relationship between that person. Julia Beluz from Vox and Victor Montori from the Mayo Clinic join us to discuss if it's possible to reconcile those competing points of view.

2.46 million people in England have osteoarthritis of the hip, and many of those go on to eventually have a hip replacement - which is now widely considered one of the most commonly performed and successful operations in the world. Jessamy Bagenal, clinical fellow with The BMJ, talks to Nick Nicholas, an obstetrician who has had OA and one of...

2.46 million people in England have osteoarthritis of the hip, and many of those go on to eventually have a hip replacement - which is now widely considered one of the most commonly performed and successful operations in the world. Jessamy Bagenal, clinical fellow with The BMJ, talks to Nick Aresti, a specialist registrar in trauma and...

The "internal market" was created after the 1987 UK general election focused attention on inadequate funding in the NHS, long waiting lists for elective surgery, and large unwarranted variations in clinical care. Economists attributed these problems to a lack of incentives for efficiency, and the remedies offered included increasing competition...

Failures in implementation of data sharing projects have eroded public trust. In the wake of NHS England’s decision to close down its care.data programme, Tjeerd-Pieter van Staa professor of health e-research at the University of Manchester, examines what lessons must be learnt, and what we can do better next time. Read the full...

With the emergence of sofobuvir, a new direct acting antiviral, treatment for Hepatitis C infection is currently undergoing it's greatest change since the discovery of the virus 25 years ago. However Gilead, who manufacture the treatment, are under fire for the cost of the druge - around $90 000 for a course of treatment. Victor Roy, doctoral...

Andrew Elder, a professor at the University of Edinburgh talks about likelihood ratios in diagnostic testing, and how they’re helpful in thinking about how context changes the predictive value of a test. This is part of a wider discussion on the evidence behind clinical examination of the cardiovascular system...

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has embraced a new model of drug testing and marketing called “adaptive pathways”, allowing new drugs for “unmet medical needs” to be launched on the market faster, on the basis of fewer data. While industry claims this is necessary, an analysis on thebmj.com looks at the assumptions underlying the new pathway,...

"I say to all Australian doctors - young, old, the political and the apolitical - that on this depends not just our ethical credibility as a profession, but our shared humanity. " Following the leaked emails published in The Guardian newspaper, alleging abuse of asylum seekers detained by the Australian government on the Pacific island of Nauru,...

Lily was diagnosed at 14 years old with stage four Hodgkin's lymphoma and received six rounds of chemotherapy and two weeks of radiotherapy. She survived but now lives with the long term effects of that therapy - and joins us to discuss how it has impacted her quality of life. We're also joined by Saif Ahmad and Thankamma Ajithkumar, oncologists...

Oversimplification and lack of evidence stigmatise people with mental illness and impede prevention efforts, says Simon Wessley, professor of psychiatry at King's College London, in an editorial published on thebmj.com. Read the full editorial: http://www.bmj.com/content/354/bmj.i4869

Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is an acute viral respiratory tract infection caused by the novel betacoronavirus. Cases have been limited to the Arabian Peninsula and its surrounding countries, and to travellers from the Middle East or their contacts. The clinical spectrum of infection varies from no symptoms or mild respiratory...

In the UK, junk food advertising is banned on children’s TV - but manufactures are still able to target children in other ways.  A recent report from the WHO  "Tackling food marketing to children in a digital world", takes a look at the issue. In this podcast we're joined by João Breda, programme manager for nutrition physical activity and...

Allocation concealment - blinding which arm of a trial a patient is randomised to - is being questioned in an analysis published on thebmj.com. David Torgerson, director of the York Trials Unit at the university of York and colleagues have been looking at the way in which trials do this randomisation, and how they subsequently report it - and...

Despite high quality systematic reviews reporting ineffectiveness, many guideline groups continue to recommend vitamin D supplementation (with or without calcium) for fall or fracture prevention. Recently Public Health England recommended that everyone needs vitamin D equivalent to an average daily intake of 10 μg (400 IU) to protect bone and...

Glasgow GP, writer, broadcaster, and The BMJ's weekly columnist Margaret McCartney joins us to talk about her new book "The State of Medicine: Keeping the Promise of the NHS". Read all of Margaret's columns: goo.gl/iKmmie

Renal transplantation improves quantity and quality of life compared with chronic dialysis. A UK general practice with 8000 patients will have around four patients with a functioning renal transplant, one patient on the transplant waiting list, and several under consideration for transplantation. Many medical problems in renal transplant...

The BMJ publishes a variety of education articles, to help doctors improve their practice. Often authors join us in our podcast to give tips on putting their recommendations into practice. In this new monthly audio round-up The BMJ’s clinical editors discuss what they have learned, and how they may alter their practice. In our second audio...

In an ideal world, policies would be evidence based - but governments are made of humans, who have positions and ideologies and moral bases. In this podcast Anthony Painter, from the RSA will be talking about why universal basic income may work, but who’s proponents cross ideological barriers, and writer and philosopher AC Grayling explains how...

Underneath all of our civilisation and science, we’re still primates - and the connection between patient and doctor can be reinforced by simply taking a hand. Robin Youngson, cofounder of hearts in healthcare, and Mitzi Blennerhassett, who has written extensively on patient engagement, have co-authored an editorial calling for the humanisation...

State regulation is necessary for safety, says Simon Capewell, professor of public health and policy at the University of Liverpool. Richard Lilford, professor of public health at the University of Warwick, argues that restricting adults’ choice can undermine such aims. Read the debate: http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i6341

Surrogate endpoints are commonly used in clinical trials to get quicker results, however Michael Baum, emeritus professor at University College London, worries that by not focusing on real outcomes - length of life, and quality of life - that these are being used to justify expensive treatments which may not benefit patients. Read the full...

Evidence shows using electronic health records can increase efficiency, and reduce preventable medical errors - but only if they are used properly. However, in the US, the president of the American Medical Association calls them almost unusable. In this debate, Richard Hurley is joined by George Gellert, Regional Medical Informatics Officer at...

Persistent physical symptoms are common and include those symptoms that last at least three months and are insufficiently explained by a medical condition after adequate examination and investigation. Observational studies in primary care report that women, especially those aged 35-45 years, more commonly present with these symptoms. In this...

All doctors, irrespective of their specialty or the setting in which they work, will care for patients who die. Around half of all deaths occur in hospitals. Evidence suggests that the quality of communication around this process is poorer in hospitals than in other settings, according to responses from relatives who have experienced bereavement....

The UK government published its report Childhood Obesity: a Plan for Action, in August 2016. A new analysis article takes them to task for the inadequacy of that response to a growing problem. Neena Modi is a professor of neonatal medicine, at Imperial College London, and president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and joins...