Chicken pox in pregnancy, Club foot, Test for Conn's syndrome, Teeth brushing
Inside Health
BBC
4.4 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr Margaret McCartney reviews advice to pregnant women concerned about the Zika virus while Andrew Shennan, Professor of Obstetrics at King's College and St Thomas' Hospital in London tells Dr Mark Porter about the risks of infection closer to home - chicken pox.
One in every one thousand babies born in the UK has congenital talipes, or club foot. This is where the foot points inwards and downwards, the sole facing backwards. But thanks to the late Ignatio Ponseti, an orthopaedic surgeon from Iowa in the USA, 95% of children born with club foot will make a complete recovery. Dr Ponseti was concerned about the low success rate of surgical treatment, which often resulted in life-long pain and stiffness and a 50% chance of recurrence. He developed a new technique in the 1960's that involves stretching the foot, holding it in plaster casts and eventually braces. The problem was that nobody believed him and it wasn't until the early 2000's that his technique became the new gold standard for club foot treatment - the news spread by his patients and their parents using the internet. Mark visits the club foot clinic at The Royal London Hospital, which sent a team, led by consultant paediatric orthopaedic surgeon, Manoj Ramachandran to study with Dr Ponseti at his Iowan clinic. Mark meets Hannah, whose 8 week old baby, Penelope, is just beginning treatment and hears from Claire, whose son, Lucas, now four years old, has, post-treatment, two perfect feet.
Professor of Endocrine Hypertension at Queen Mary University London, Morris Brown, gives more details about the test for Conn's Syndrome - which could account for as many as one in ten cases of high blood pressure.
And Inside Health listener Howard, calls on Mark to settle a teeth cleaning dispute between him and his wife. Should you brush before or after breakfast? The British Dental Association's Chief Scientific Officer, Professor Damian Walmsley adjudicates.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast, |
| 0:05.4 | The Traitors Uncloaked. But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's |
| 0:10.6 | Saturday bonus episodes, the Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Ryland, and comedy specials |
| 0:16.2 | from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffel and Rommas Sh Ranga Nathan. However, and maybe I'm biased, |
| 0:21.9 | it's really all about the traitors uncloked. So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and |
| 0:26.5 | podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds. Hello, thank you for listening to this edition of |
| 0:31.3 | Inside Health. I hope you enjoy it. Coming up in today's program, cleaning your teeth in the morning, |
| 0:36.7 | should you do it before or after breakfast, |
| 0:40.0 | and club foot, how a new treatment has transformed the lives of those affected. |
| 0:45.3 | This is Lucas's foot, the crazy foot, as we call it. |
| 0:49.2 | As you can see, he's got lovely, normal feet with a bit of a curvy toe which one's your crazy foot Lucas |
| 0:58.0 | that one and it's got a little bit of a thinner leg on the right but that is it and you can't tell |
| 1:05.8 | at all more from Lucas later but first Zika almost un of until recently, the virus is now making headlines across the world, not least because of it being linked to microchophily in the babies of women who caught the infection while pregnant. |
| 1:22.0 | Dr Margaret McCartney has been following the latest developments and is in our Glasgow studio. |
| 1:26.6 | Margaret, I say linked because we don't know for sure, do we, |
| 1:29.9 | that the recent rise in children with microkephaly is definitely due to Zika. |
| 1:34.0 | We do not. |
| 1:34.7 | And the official line from the World Health Organisation is that they are agreed that a cause, |
| 1:39.8 | a relationship has, and that Zika causes microkephaly. |
| 1:43.3 | It's strongly suspected, but not scientifically proven. |
| 1:46.7 | And the World Health Organisation, along with many other agencies, are working pretty hard, |
| 1:50.6 | I think, to try and work out what is cause and what is effect here. |
... |
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