Isabel Healthcare Blog

Childhood Absence Epilepsy (CAE) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have similar symptoms and are often incorrectly diagnosed in children. There are many reasons as to why children are misdiagnosed, including failing to obtain a good history, or poor information from the family. The child’s school teacher may have contacted the parents  as they have noticed the child’s lack of attention, ‘blanking out’ or daydreaming episodes in class, which are affecting the child’s learning.  CAE and ADHD need careful evaluation as they have different treatment options and the wrong diagnosis can make the child’s symptoms worse or cause them to develop new symptoms due to incorrect medication being prescribed.

Our blog this week is devoted to cardiovascular disease, or heart disease, to tie in with the new online ‘Heart Age Test’ recently launched by Public Health England (PHE) in the UK. PHE decided to launch the campaign to try and help reduce the number of people who die unexpectedly and unnecessarily each year from heart attacks and strokes. According to PHE, “Millions are at risk of cardiovascular disease but don’t know it, putting themselves at real risk of suffering ill health or dying younger”. While the death rate from cardiovascular disease has seen a massive drop, falling more than 75% since 1961, it still causes more than a quarter of all deaths in the UK with similar figures in the US.

If you’ve been a long time subscriber to the Isabel blog, or followed our work from its beginnings in 1999, then you’ll know we’ve always had a strong connection to sepsis, particularly in pediatric care. Isabel Maude was nearly fatally misdiagnosed when she fell ill with necrotising fasciitis, a flesh-eating disease which when missed can very quickly become dangerously infected and cause sepsis. September 13th every year is World Sepsis Day (WSD), where we try to raise awareness globally of this life threatening emergency disease.

Going to the doctor, or talking to a doctor in hospital, can bring about many anxieties. There is, of course, the original issue for which you are going to the doctor and its looming diagnosis, which can be downright scary, be it a sore throat or an unexplained lump. Add on top of this, however, the time constraints of your consultation, the many questions you know you’ll forget as soon as you get in the room, and the many more questions which will inevitably come up once the doctor starts talking, and it doesn’t take long before you’re contemplating the idea of not going at all, or just ignoring the problem. At Isabel, we want to do everything we can to alleviate these anxieties, and help patients feel empowered to talk to their doctor about their problems, ask the right questions, and feel satisfied with their consultation, diagnosis and follow up. One of the big worries is understanding the vocabulary that doctors use. Not understanding the terminology during an appointment with your doctor can be a real block in processing the possible diagnoses and getting answers to your questions, which may even delay a diagnosis or cause a misdiagnosis. It is also an issue which is relatively easily solved. With our handy blogpost of the most common terms that come up, you can go into your next doctor’s appointment or talk in hospital with confidence!

In the world of digestion there are many terms and different conditions, and so it’s no wonder that this can cause some confusion. The symptoms for many gastrointestinal conditions, as they are known, can be quite similar as well, and this can lead to misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis. Two very common terms we hear around the subject are ‘IBD’ and ‘IBS.’ You’d be forgiven for thinking these two acronyms are interchangeable and refer to the same condition, but they are, in reality, different. We will explain the two terms in this blogpost, talk about some of the symptoms of common gastrointestinal conditions, and the treatments that are recommended for them.

Pregnancy is portrayed as a time of happiness and emotional well-being, and for many that is their experience, but evidence shows mental illness can affect women in pregnancy.  Pregnancy impacts women from many angles with regards to their physical and mental health and also the baby’s health. There is much debate over whether you are more or less likely to have ill mental health during pregnancy. Statistically, if a woman has had mental ill health in the past or at the time she falls pregnant, then she is more likely to have mental ill health during pregnancy or in the year after giving birth (postpartum) than at other times in her life. Overall, however, psychiatric admissions and completed suicide are less common in pregnancy than at other times. Indeed, some women who have had mental ill health in the past remain well during pregnancy, everyone is different and have varying triggers for becoming unwell.

Blood Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM) takes place each September in countries around the world and is dedicated to raising awareness about what blood cancers are, who is affected and calling for improvements in patient care. A recent survey by the NHS in the UK revealed that blood cancers are taking longer to diagnose than most other cancers. Over a third of blood cancer patients visiting their family doctor with symptoms needed to see their doctor at least 3 times before receiving a diagnosis. Phil Reynolds from the UK charity, Bloodwise, explains this is due to a number of factors: “including a lack of awareness of blood cancer symptoms and the ease in which many symptoms can be confused with more common conditions. He continues: “for some types of blood cancer, early diagnosis can have a significant impact on outcome for patients” which is why BCAM is so vitally important to help reduce delayed diagnosis.

Your skin is the largest organ in the body, protecting your internal organs, skeleton and muscles from the outside world, regulating temperature and vitamin D absorption, and giving us the sense of touch. As skin is such a large and complex part of our body, it’s no wonder that there are many conditions and diseases, both rare and common, that are associated with the skin. We’ve previously written a blogpost on all things skin, from its functions to the most common skin conditions, but this week we are focussing on one particular skin condition. August is Psoriasis Awareness Month in the USA, so read on to hear all the main symptoms, causes, treatments and information on Psoriasis.

There has been a lot of talk this week, both in the healthcare world and beyond, about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Babylon's AI chatbot was released a few weeks ago, and has since come under some scrutiny, on social media and from the press, as to its accuracy in diagnosing patients correctly. IBM Watson, a system developed for many years now and which has cost the technology company billions of dollars, was also questioned as to its efficacy in a hospital setting, and whether it helped doctors to speed up and improve their diagnostic processes. At Isabel, we have several core beliefs that all feed into our mission of improving diagnosis. While we do not wish to directly address the Babylon and IBM Watson cases, the talk around AI has definitely intensified over the last few days, and we want to be part of that conversation.

A cough is the rapid expulsion of air from the lungs when the air passages are irritated. Cells within the air passages become irritated by fluids, mucus or material and a cough reflex is initiated, forcing air out of the lungs under high pressure to clear the irritating substances and to protect the lungs. A cough reflex can be voluntary or involuntary. In this post we go over the several types of cough and their common causes, as well as discussing symptoms you shouldn't ignore when you have a cough.