The Health News Australia October 29 2017

• Skin is generally pretty good at fixing itself. But sometimes wounds can linger, stubbornly, for weeks, then months, and even years. The truth is that while medicine has come a long way in the past few centuries, wound care has been left behind a bit, according to wound expert Allison Cowin, from the University of South Australia. If a wound hasn’t healed or improved by the end of “the Golden four weeks”, then there is an increased risk of chronic wound developing.
• A team of Country Health SA clinicians and South Australian IT experts have won a $340,000 grant to develop the artificial intelligence medic with the goal of early intervention when it finds people at risk. Country Health SA’s Integrated Cardiovascular Clinical Network (iCCnet) will develop an AI platform that collates clinical data and automatically assesses peoples’ health risks based on tests put into the health database.
• 50-year-old Jeannie Christie from Cairns has hated looking at herself ever since her double mastectomy in 2011 , when she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. Her 27-year-old daughter Janelle Clarence recently tested positive for a BRCA1 gene mutation, the same mutation that saw actress Angelina Jolie make headlines in 2015 and that means it is likely she will get breast cancer unless she undergoes a preventative double mastectomy.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 29th of  October 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health News

http://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2017-10-26/what-you-need-to-know-about-wound-care/9088426

Scratches, grazes, bumps, bruises, burns, cuts, bites … our skin cops a battering on an almost daily basis, yet most of the time we hardly think anything of it. For many of us, wound treatment simply involves washing off the dirt or blood, sticking on a plaster, going about our business and leaving our skin to do the rest. This is often fine; skin is generally pretty good at fixing itself. But sometimes wounds can linger, stubbornly, for weeks, then months, and even years. The truth is that while medicine has come a long way in the past few centuries, wound care has been left behind a bit, according to wound expert Allison Cowin, from the University of South Australia. Professor Cowin said  “We’ve been trying to treat wounds from the beginning of time and there have been many different types of things done to them with maggots and honey. “
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Nine times out of ten, splinters pose no problem and are trivial. But sometimes things can go very wrong. This is an issue especially for the elderly, with Professor Cowin citing data suggesting as many as one in four people in residential aged care have a chronic, non-healing wound. One of the big questions about wounds is when to seek medical help. Wound specialist Sue Templeton says there isn’t a hard and fast rule, but suggests that if a wound scares you, get a professional to take a look.

Other red flags might be if the wound is still bleeding after five to ten minutes, or if the laceration or puncture is so deep you can’t see the bottom of it. With burns, the advice from Saint John’s New South Wales is to see a doctor if the burn is deep or if it’s larger than a twenty cent piece, if it involves the airway, face, hands or genitals, or if you’re unsure how severe the burn is. Wound consultant Wendy White suggests the location and size of wounds are also key factors to consider. The first four weeks after an injury are what Miss White calls ‘the Golden Four Weeks’, during which the body should proceed through the normal process of healing. If a wound hasn’t healed or improved by the end of that period, then there is an increased risk of chronic wound developing. As for medicinal honey, Miss Templeton says, this could help for minor wounds. A number of studies have found it can be an effective wound dressing. A number of studies have looked into the effectiveness of manuka honey as a wound dressing. But she stresses that you need to buy the right type of honey, because regular store-bought honey could do more harm than good.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/artificial-intelligence-will-probe-health-records-to-alert-south-australians-at-risk/news-story/681de28e151bb8d7c88cc6465a2f938e

A team of Country Health South Australia clinicians and South Australian IT experts have won a three hundred forty thousand grant to develop the artificial intelligence medic with the goal of early intervention when it finds people at risk. The Federal Government grant announced today at the AusBiotech Conference in Adelaide is to develop an Australian-first cloud-based artificial intelligence digital health platform. Country Health SA’s Integrated Cardiovascular Clinical Network will develop an AI platform that collates clinical data and automatically assesses peoples’ health risks based on tests put into the health database.This includes when they are presenting to hospital as well as tests done at home and put into the system. Clinical Director at iCCnet, Dr Phil Tideman, said for the past decade Country Health SA’s iCCNet team has been working on developing clinical databases that collect data in real time — including blood test and ECG results.
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iCCNet has been recognised in the past for its innovation and is nationally recognised for many of its programs and research, including achieving a twenty two per cent reduction in thirty-day mortality for country heart attack patients. This means country patients now have the same survival rates as metropolitan patients.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-27/breast-cancer-survivors-agonising-wait-reconstruction-north-qld/9089424

Jeannie Christie only has two mirrors in her house — the ones she can’t take down.
The fifty-year-old Cairns woman has hated looking at herself ever since her double mastectomy in two thousand eleven, when she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. She was put on a waiting list for breast reconstructive surgery at Cairns Base Hospital at the time. She is still waiting and she is not alone. There are more than one hundred Far North Queensland women who cannot access the surgery, which Queensland Health blames on a lack of plastic and reconstructive surgeons in the region.
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“I was disgusted. I thought I was a monster and there was nothing about me that was feminine.
“Then when you start chemo your hair falls out, so all of a sudden you’re looking in the mirror going, ‘What is this?’ Breast reconstructive surgery is classified as a category three surgery in Queensland, meaning candidates should have access to a specialist consultation within a year.
Miss Christie has banded together with other far north Queensland women to ask why this has not resulted in a surgery date.

Breast Cancer Network Australia has been working with some of the women waiting for breast reconstructive surgery. Communications manager Kirsten Pilatti said government funding and hospital communication were the biggest barriers. Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service executive director of medical services, Nicki Murdock, admitted communication with patients needed to improve. Miss Christie’s twenty seven-year-old daughter Janelle Clarence recently tested positive for a BRCA1 gene mutation, the same mutation that saw actress Angelina Jolie make headlines in two thousand fifteen. This means it is likely she will get breast cancer unless she undergoes a preventative double mastectomy.