Laparoscopic Injuries Inserting a needle into the abdomen and peritoneal cavity  for the purpose of instilling carbon dioxide gas  in preparation for laparoscopy is essentially very safe because of the design of the Verres needle: once the resistance of the abdominal wall is overcome a sheath slides over the sharp needle to prevent it damaging bowel and other organs. The devices used to instil gas have pressure controls which limit the flow of gas under conditions of high pre...

Potential Fetal Anomalies missed at the 19 week ultrasound Fetal anomaly scans at about 19 weeks of gestation are often thought by patients to exclude all major fetal anomalies. However this is not the case: for example it has been noted that up to 50% of congenital heart malformations are missed (RADIUS Study) in this way. Another example of this was a Dutch study of over 5,000 patients scanned between 16 and 24 weeks. Those skilled sonologists and sonographers   missed 10 m...

 ‘Babies who Stroke’: the leading known cause of cerebral palsy Much is unknown about causation of cerebral palsy but that is not the case for children born at or near full term with hemiplegic (one sided) cerebral palsy. In 30% of these children a blood vessel supplying the brain has become blocked, usually by clot formation. The hemiplegia more commonly involves the right arm and leg as the site of thrombosis is the area of brain supplied by the left middle cerebral ...

Cerebral palsy (CP) was first described in England in 1862.It is a term for a group of non-progressive disorders of movement and posture caused by disturbances in the developing brain. The incidence is thought to be between 1.5 and 3.6 cases per thousand live births. In Australia the rate of CP diagnosed by age 5 years is 2 per thousand. There are about 34,000 Australians with CP with an affected child being born every 18 hours.

The annual cost of caring for each affected person i...