Introduction Appendicitis most often occurs between the ages of 10 19 years, with an incidence of between 19-28 per 10,000 before the age of 14 years. Less than 7 per 10,000 children present with appendicitis before the age of 4 years & less than 5% of presentations with appendicitis occur before the age of 5 years.  Causation  In tropical climates the cause is often a parasitic worm (pinworm or roundworm) causing obstr...

The advent of the Non Invasive Prenatal Test has been a major advance for the detection of Trisomy 21 (Down s.), Trisomy 18 (Edwards s.) & Trisomy 13 (Patau s.) and reduces the need for invasive tests which have up to a 3% risk of miscarriage. There has been a subsequent tendency to abandon the previous nuchal translucency ultrasound and biochemical test because of the increased accuracy of detection of the trisomies with the NIPT test which can detect 99% of Down syndrome fetuses ...

The recent Federal Government decision to rebate cervical cancer screening only every 5 years and to only rebate for screening after the age of 24 years and under the age of 74 years raises the question as to whether other aspects of women's health could be also screened far less frequently. That could be an unintended negative consequence of the recent Government funding decision.  The chance of an Australian woman being diagnosed with a gynaecological cancer by age 85 is 1:5...

I recently returned from the inaugural South Pacific Medical Student's Medical Camp in Malolo Island, Fiji. 120 medical students from Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Papua New Guinea as well as New Zealand and Australia spent a week on a tribal area in the school grounds courtesy of the local chief. The dais was a single structure decorated with palm leaves and the audience sat under a similar structure 25 metres away. There were some fascinating lectures from plant biologists, climatologists,...

The use of ovarian tumour mark-ers, like those for other tumours, are used both to suggest the presence of a tumour as well as monitor its remission after de-finitive treatment. The problem is the lack of specificity which means that many non malignant processes can be associated with elevated values or that the malignancy is non-gynaecological. CA125. Cancer antigen 125 (CA 125) is used the most extensively. Approximately 60% of malignant ovarian tumours are associated with an elevate...