Occup Med (Lond)
December 2023
Background: Burnout arising from chronic work-related stress is endemic among surgeons in the UK. Identification of contributory and modifiable psychosocial work characteristics could inform risk reduction activities.
Aims: We aimed to assess the extent to which surgeons' psychosocial working conditions met aspirational Management Standards delineated by the UK Health and Safety Executive, draw comparisons with national general workforce benchmarks and explore associations with burnout.
Background: Burnout is endemic in surgeons in the UK and linked with poor patient safety and quality of care, mental health problems, and workforce sustainability. Mechanisms are required to facilitate the efficient identification of burnout in this population. Multi-item measures of burnout may be unsuitable for this purpose owing to assessment burden, expertise required for analysis, and cost.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Surgeon burnout has implications for patient safety and workforce sustainability. The aim of this study was to establish the prevalence of burnout among surgeons in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: This cross-sectional online survey was set in the UK National Health Service and involved 601 surgeons across the UK of all specialities and grades.
Background: Presentation at academic conferences is an important marker of research productivity. However, not all accepted abstracts progress to full publication, and there is anecdotal evidence suggesting an imbalance in sex and ethnicity amongst presenters. There is a lack of data evaluating the outcome of prize presentation sessions at academic surgical conferences in the UK.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOpioid misuse is now considered a major public health epidemic in North America, with substantial social and financial consequences. As well as socio-economic and commercial drivers, modifiable risk-factors that have resulted in this crisis have been identified. The purpose of this study was to identify whether, within England, modifiable drivers for persistent postoperative opioid use were present.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The sensitivity of axillary ultrasonography (AUS) has increased in recent years, enabling detection of even low-volume axillary nodal metastases. The aim here was to evaluate the axillary tumour burden in women with a fine-needle aspiration/core biopsy-proven positive node on AUS and in those with a positive sentinel node biopsy (SNB).
Methods: This retrospective cohort study included all patients with early breast cancer who had AUS and axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) between 2011 and 2014.
Objective: We sought to quantify the anti-inflammatory effects of two cannabinoid drugs, cannabidiol (CBD) and palmitoylethanolamide (PEA), in cultured cell lines and compared this effect with experimentally inflamed explant human colonic tissue. These effects were explored in acutely and chronically inflamed colon, using inflammatory bowel disease and appendicitis explants.
Design: Caco-2 cells and human colonic explants collected from elective bowel cancer, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) or acute appendicitis resections, and were treated with the following drug treatments: vehicle, an inflammatory protocol of interferon γ (IFNγ) and tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα; 10 ng/ml), inflammation and PEA (10 µM), inflammation and CBD (10 µM), and PEA or CBD alone, CBD or vehicle were added simultaneously with IFNγ.
The endocannabinoid system has previously been shown to play a role in the permeability and inflammatory response of the human gut. The goal of our study was to determine the effects of endogenous anandamide (AEA) and 2-arachidonoyl glycerol (2-AG) on the permeability and inflammatory response of intestinal epithelium under normal, inflammatory, and hypoxic conditions. Human intestinal mucosa was modeled using Caco-2 cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCannabinoids modulate intestinal permeability through cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB). The endocannabinoid-like compounds oleoylethanolamine (OEA) and palmitoylethanolamine (PEA) play an important role in digestive regulation, and we hypothesized they would also modulate intestinal permeability. Transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER) was measured in human Caco-2 cells to assess permeability after application of OEA and PEA and relevant antagonists.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Surg Case Rep
October 2012
Introduction: Portal hypertension is an unusual complication of liver metastases, which is frequently occurring in malignant disease. Portal hypertension may cause oesophageal varices and also stoma varices (colostomy and ileostomy). Oesophageal varices and bleeding from these varices have been frequently reported in literature.
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