Also in the press

DOCTORS STRESSED BY CANCER WORKLOAD

Family doctors claim they are "exhausted" from having to look after seriously ill patients who would have been in hospital, report the Daily Mail (p12) and The Daily Telegraph (p10).

The government wants patients with cancer, heart problems and other long-term illnesses to remain at home.

But doctors complain that such complicated patients cannot be effectively dealt with within the allocated 10 minutes per patient. The complaints were raised at the British Medical Association's annual conference in Bournemouth, the papers say.

ASTHMA

Nine out of 10 asthma deaths each year could be prevented if patients were better treated and understood the importance of using their inhalers, reports The Daily Telegraph (p10).

The paper quotes Dr Dinesh Saralaya, who runs a clinic in Bradford, as saying: "We need to raise the profile of the disease... Patients need to be educated properly about it and then take a bit more responsibility for managing it themselves."

STATINS

New research has shown that statins work far better for men than they do for women, reports the Daily Mail (p27).

The health records of 43,000 people were assessed and U.S. researchers found that statins reduced the overall risk of dying in men by 21% and the chance of stroke by 19%.

In women, however, the researchers, from Columbia University, New York, say statins did not significantly cut the risk of stroke or dying. The study is published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.