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Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a leading cause of disease and injury burden for Queenslanders, with 246 people admitted to hospital for heart disease every day in 2018. Despite significant reductions in cardiovascular death rates nationally, it still amounted to approximately a quarter of all Australian deaths in 2018. Globally, CVDs are the number one cause of death, taking an estimated 17.9 million lives each year. Now a new Australian cardiology text, Problem-Based Cardiology Cases, takes a unique case-based approach to helping clinicians address this global health problem.

Many of the more than 2,000 stillbirths that occur in Australia each year are preventable through improved maternity care, according to a major new collection of peer-reviewed papers published in the journal Women and Birth. Ten papers highlight the tragedy of stillbirth in Australia, which remains a major public health problem with an enormous mortality burden and psychosocial impact on parents, families and the wider community.

The involvement of patient advocates should ensure that new Australian melanoma management guidelines are rigorously patient-focused, according to the authors of a Perspective article published by the MJA.

Remdesivir has been shown to reduce the duration of illness in patients with severe COVID-19. But what about patients with moderate disease? This EBM Focus article, from the DynaMed editorial team, provides a concise summary of clinical trials most likely to inform clinical practice.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a flood of potentially substandard research amid the rush to publish, with a string of papers retracted or under a cloud and a surge in submissions to pre-print servers where fewer quality checks are made, a leading Queensland-based ethicist has warned. This has serious implications for patients, clinicians, and potentially government policy.

Clinicians need assurance that the diagnostic and treatment decisions they are making are founded on the most current evidence-based research and information available. CKN’s point of care (POC) tools can provide clinicians with that confidence when making important decisions within the patient care setting. 

Certain oral antiseptics and mouthwashes may have the ability to inactivate human coronaviruses, according to a Penn State College of Medicine research study published in the Journal of Medical Virology. The results indicate that some of these products might be useful for reducing the viral load, or amount of virus, in the mouth after infection and may help to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19.

Infections account for almost three quarters of Australian infants needing to see a doctor and 1 in 10 presenting to an emergency department by 12 months of age, according to a new study.

People with ‘silent’ COVID-19 infection have as much coronavirus in their noses and throats as those with symptoms, reveals research published online in the BMJ journal Thorax. Given how many of these people there are (20% of those infected, the study findings show) they may have a key role in driving the spread of COVID-19, warn the researchers, who go on to suggest that this warrants extending testing provision.

The estimated 140,000 diagnostic errors made in Australia every year could be prevented by implementing key strategies, according to a perspective paper by a University of Queensland researcher.