Talk Evidence

Mar 05 2025 77 ep. 39 mins 117
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The podcast from The BMJ for evidence based medicine Talk Evidence: where research, guidance and practice are debated and demystified

  Health & Fitness
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Anti-HIV injections vs. oral medication, and best uses for AI in healthcare

Mar 05 2025 30 mins  
Helen Macdonald and Juan Franco are back, delving into some new evidence. Studies showing that bi-annual injection that could prevent HIV transmission sound incredible, but will the implementation research find that the tried and tested pill regime is better? Jen Manne-Goehler, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, explains all about Lenicaprovir . An

UTI dipstick tests, and the effects of staff turnover on patients

Feb 04 2025 38 mins  
In this first episode of 2025, hosts Helen MacDonald and Juan Franco focus on hospitals - asking how useful UTI dipstick tests really are for acutely ill patients, and what are the effects of staff turnover on patient care in NHS hospitals? 01:11 The use of dipsticks for acutely ill UTI patients 07:48 Interview with UTI paper author 17:26 Turnover of doctors and nurses and the effe

Talking Christmas evidence 2024

Jan 01 2025 26 mins  
In this special festive episode, Helen MacDonald, Juan Franco, and guest Tim Feeney discuss three intriguing themes from BMJ's 2024 Christmas edition: cognitive dysfunction in careers that require spatial cognition, and in large language models; the effectiveness of heated mittens on osteoarthritis hand symptoms; and a trial exploring just-in-time training for doctors. 00:40 C

Starting to measure sustainability, and changes in breast cancer screening

Aug 08 2024 28 mins  
Measuring the carbon impact of healthcare interventions is essential if we're going to make the sector sustainable, however tracing all of the emmission from even a simple treatment can be tricky. Romi Haas, a research fellow at Monash Department of Clinical Epidemiology joins us to explain how it works, and how research could be more efficient. New U.S. guideline on breast cancer

The evidence on deprescribing

Jun 18 2024 28 mins  
It's a therapeutics evidence feast this month. We start with deprescribing in older adults - Anna Hung, assistant professor at the Duke University School of Medicine has written a summary of the evidence, and we discuss why there are so few trials on an important topic. Metformin is typically first line for type II diabetes, but what should be next? A new cohort study emulating a c

Will semaglutide buck the trend of other weight loss drugs?

Apr 19 2024 40 mins  
Helen Macdonald, BMJ's publication ethics and content integrity editor, and Juan Franco, editor of BMJ EBM are back with another episode of Talk Evidence. This month, we'll be focussing on semaglutide, for managing obesity. Interviews with James Cave, editor-in-chief of Drug and Therapeutic Bulletin, and Lene Bull Christiansen, who has personal and professional experience with obes

Insulin without refrigeration and the complexities of consent

Dec 11 2023 40 mins  
The December edition of the Talk Evidence podcast discusses the complexities of seeking consent from patients who are part of large data sets, and some new research to help patients living with diabetes in places without certain power supplies. First patient consent and data - in the UK, two stories that have made the public worry about the use of their health data. Firstly the new

Low carb and cancer screening

Nov 09 2023 33 mins  
Each episode of Talk Evidence we take a dive into an issue or paper which is in the news, with a little help from some knowledgeable guests to help us to understand what it all means for clinical care, policy, or research. In this episode: Helen Macdonald take a deep dive into cancer screening tests, prompted by a paper in JAMA which showed most have no effect on all cause morta

Talking overdiagnosis

Sep 16 2023
In this month's Talk Evidence, Helen and Juan are reporting from Preventing Overdiagnosis - the conference that raises issues of diagnostic accuracy, and asks if starting the process of medicalisation is always the right thing to do for patients. In this episode, they talk about home testing, sustainability and screening. They're also joined by two guests to talk about the overdi

Ensuring the integrity of research, and the future of AI as authors

Aug 05 2023 36 mins  
In this month's Talk Evidence, we're getting a little meta - how do we keep an eye on research to make sure it's done with integrity. Helen Macdonald is BMJ's Publication ethics and content integrity editor - and we quiz her about what that actually means on a day to day basis. Ensuring the integrity of research could be made both easier, and harder, by the ascendance of large lang