Medical Journal News

New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 392, Issue 4, Page 313-315, January 23, 2025.

Health misinformation (false or misleading data shared unintentionally) and disinformation (deliberately deceptive information) are not new, but the COVID-19 pandemic marked a turning point. The sense of anxiety and urgency, coupled with the rise in the use of social media and politically charged interpretations of the pandemic, fostered the spread of a series of misleading claims about the virus and medical countermeasures. Health misinformation was weaponised as propaganda, exploiting fear, undermining public trust, and hindering collective action in critical moments.

An international team has set out to answer one of the more vexing questions in paediatric medicine today—namely, are antibiotics alone adequate treatment for acute appendicitis? First, they are to be applauded for this important and unfunded effort. In The Lancet, Shawn D St Peter and colleagues report the results of an international, open-label, multicentre, randomised non-inferiority trial of non-operative treatment with antibiotics alone versus surgical appendicectomy for acute, uncomplicated appendicitis in children—the APPY trial.

The Haroldo Conti Cultural Centre remains closed. The official explanation from President Javier Milei's Government: “internal restructuring”. This month, thousands of protesters gathered in front of the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA) in Buenos Aires, home to the Cultural Centre, Argentina's National Memory Archive, and, between 1976 and 1983, a Clandestine Centre of Detention, Torture, and Extermination. ESMA was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2023. The protesters entitled their vigil, A Memory that Burns (Una memoria que arde).

The Nazi regime's eugenic determination to “purify” the German “Volk” and society astonishes us to this day with its combination of sheer brutality, careful planning, and public support. The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring introduced on July 14, 1933 mandated the forced sterilisation of individuals with physical and mental disabilities, people who were regarded as so-called “asocial (criminal) elements”, homosexuals, and Roma and Afro-German ethnic minorities. Between 1933 and 1945, it is estimated between 310 000 and 350 000 people belonging to these groups were coercively sterilised and thousands died of medical complications resulting from these procedures.

At first glance, the title of We Live in Time, a charming and moving comedy-drama from director John Crowley, suggests something abstract and ethereal. Yet it is a statement profoundly rooted in the embodied human experience. We live in time in the sense that the pleasures, pains, and restrictions of our lives are defined not only by our physical surroundings, but by the passage of time itself. Early in the film, this issue becomes particularly pertinent to Almut Brühl (Florence Pugh), a chef whose ovarian cancer has returned, and is at stage 3; how, she wonders, should she spend the next year? Undergoing treatment, which might not work, or simply trying to enjoy her remaining time? What is “the right choice”?

In March, 2024, Paul Alexander, the last person in the world living with an iron lung, died. Alexander had contracted poliomyelitis in 1952 when he was 6 years old, and from that point onwards was only able to move his head, neck, and mouth. Iron lungs became a symbol of polio during the epidemic outbreaks of the 1950s, when they were widely used to save the lives of patients with respiratory paralysis during the acute phase of the disease. Iron lungs are now staple exhibition pieces in history of medicine museums, as global polio vaccination efforts have put a stop to major epidemic waves.

Former US President, humanitarian, and global health champion. Born on Oct 1, 1924, in Plains, GA, USA, he died there on Dec 29, 2024, aged 100 years.

Poverty eradication by 2030 is the primary objective of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. China is determined to eradicate extreme poverty and uses the relocation of people who are poverty-stricken as a major measure of the targeted poverty alleviation strategy. Wangnian Liang and colleagues discussed the collaboration between Tsinghua University's Vanke School of Public Health and The Lancet aiming to comprehensively evaluate the effectiveness of China's Health and Poverty Alleviation Campaign.

We read with great interest the Article by Rana S Hinman and colleagues,1 which compared the effectiveness of telerehabilitation consultations for chronic knee pain with in-person consultations. However, we have some concerns.

We praise Rana S Hinman and colleagues1 for their comprehensive investigation into the efficacy of telerehabilitation consultations versus in-person consultations for chronic knee pain management. However, although the study offers substantial contributions to the field of rehabilitation medicine, we wish to highlight aspects that could enhance the interpretation of results.

We read with great interest about the PEAK trial,1 which revealed equivalence in clinical outcomes between in-person and remote physiotherapy for patients with chronic knee pain.1 We comment on the significance of the behavioural change intervention of the non-inferiority trial.

We read the Article by Rana S Hinman and colleagues1 with great interest. As highlighted by the study, a substantial reduction in travel time and cost to the clinic is of great benefit to the older population who require financial assistance and have a high physical burden of travel.

We welcome the interest in our PEAK randomised trial1 and thank the authors for their Correspondence. We agree with Jieliang Shen and colleagues that using social media and email for recruitment might have resulted in a sample more likely to find telerehabilitation acceptable. However, our findings are consistent with an equivalence trial2 in people seeking musculoskeletal health care, which showed that telephone-delivered physiotherapy care was equally as effective as in-person physiotherapy. Nonetheless, future implementation research is needed to confirm our findings in participants seeking health care.

GBD 2021 Diabetes Collaborators. Global, regional, and national burden of diabetes from 1990 to 2021, with projections of prevalence to 2050: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021. Lancet 2023; 402: 203–34—In this Article, the map in figure 1 has been updated to correct boundary lines and shading in selected regions. This correction has been made to the online version as of Jan 16, 2025.

Based on cumulative failure rates and a 20% non-inferiority margin, antibiotic management of non-perforated appendicitis was inferior to appendicectomy.

A 4-year-old boy in a collision with a speeding motorcycle as he crossed the road was referred to our hospital from a peripheral clinic. The child had injuries to his left leg, left arm, chest, and head; there was no history of loss of consciousness.

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common, heterogeneous, multifactorial condition, which is part of the overarching syndrome of acute kidney diseases and disorders. This condition's incidence highest in low-income and middle-income countries. In the short term, AKI is associated with increased mortality, an increased risk of complications, extended stays in hospital, and high health-care costs. Long-term complications include chronic kidney disease, kidney failure, cardiovascular morbidity, and an increased risk of death.

Multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infections cause significant morbidity and mortality globally. These pathogens easily acquire antimicrobial resistance (AMR), further highlighting their clinical significance. Third-generation cephalosporin-resistant and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (eg, Escherichia coli and Klebsiella spp), multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii are the most problematic and have been identified as priority pathogens.

白居易曾云：“生人莫作妇人身，百年苦乐由他人。”, 道尽了封建女性的辛酸。值得庆幸的是当下人们愿意平等的对待女性。可我学医以来的经历，似乎又在告诉我，在女性健康方面，一些传统观念仍好似蚕茧一般束缚着女性本身。