Stroke man recovers speech, Apple watch and ECGs, Newborn heel prick test
Inside Health
BBC
4.4 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2018
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Four years ago, Peter, a retired engineer from Gloucestershire, suffered a small stroke and lost the ability to speak. He communicated by hand signals and writing notes to his wife, Carol. But this summer, as he tells Dr Mark Porter, he woke up one morning and, much to everybody's amazement, began to talk....and he hasn't stopped since. Later that same day, a second stroke was diagnosed but his newly-returned speech was unaffected. It's a remarkable story and Alex Leff, Professor of Cognitive Neurology at the Queen Square Institute of Neurology in London discusses Peter's experience but describes what usually happens when stroke patients experience aphasia.
We're all familiar with devices like FitBits and gym monitors that measure your pulse rate but the latest development in wearable tech is a watch that monitors your heart. The latest Apple watch will offer ECG-like capabilities which can spot potentially worrying disturbances in heart rhythm. But Inside Health's Dr Margaret McCartney has serious concerns about the use of such tech for screening in healthy populations.
If you're under 50 you've almost certainly had it. The heel prick test or NHS newborn blood spot screening programme is done during the first week of life and it's designed to detect nine different conditions before they can cause symptoms or irreversible damage in young children. Dr Elaine Murphy is a consultant in inherited metabolic diseases at the Charles Dent Metabolic Unit at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London and she tells Mark about the history of the heel prick test and describes the original condition, phenylketonuria or PKU, that the 1969 test was designed to detect.
Producer: Fiona Hill
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 Shranger Nathan. However, and maybe I'm biased, it's really all about The Traitors Uncloaked. |
| 0:24.3 | So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.6 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:33.1 | Hello and welcome back. |
| 0:35.1 | Today, Margaret McCartney on the latest wearable tech. |
| 0:38.4 | She shares her thoughts on the new Apple Watch, which doesn't just monitor your pulse rate, |
| 0:43.0 | but now has an ECG-type capability that can spot abnormal heart rhythms too. |
| 0:48.7 | And a newborn heel-prick test, offered to every baby in the UK for nearly half a century. |
| 0:53.6 | It was one of the earliest |
| 0:55.0 | national screening programmes, and, like Topsy, it has growed. But first, a remarkable story |
| 1:01.9 | and something I've never come across or even heard of in over 30 years of being a doctor. |
| 1:07.8 | Four years ago, retired engineer Peter lost his ability to speak following a stroke, |
| 1:13.6 | only to have it miraculously return this summer following another stroke, much to everyone's |
| 1:19.6 | amazement, not least his wife Carols. It all started in the carol. |
| 1:24.6 | Well, we were driving and I was actually driving and I asked him the time and he didn't |
| 1:30.7 | answer me. So I asked him again and I just sensed something was wrong. When you live with |
| 1:37.2 | something, been married for 52 years, you know everything, don't you? Anyway, the speech went and |
| 1:44.0 | that was when we obviously got medical help. |
| 1:47.9 | It was gradual actually over a matter of a few weeks. I found it more and more difficult |
... |
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