Over the past few days a lot of a health stories have risen concerning the United Kingdom, and now we’re going to report the 3 main stories surrounding the UK, health and possibly the NHS. Here they are;

NHS must back genetic testing to cause a revolution!

This is a new report which suggests that the NHS need to put a lot more effort and energy into enforcing genetic testing in order to cause a “revolution” in diagnosing, treating and preventing disease. Sir John Bell has informed the NHS that not putting genetic testing at the heart of the NHS would “come at a high cost to patients”.

Genetic testing is now being used more often due to a variety of reasons – mainly because of the increase in scientific knowledge but also because of plummeting costs of working out a patients genetic code. It used to cost millions to sequence a patients genome but now only costs thousands and many have said it could cost “potentially nothing” in the future.

Sir Bell also wants a national centre where all genetic information from patients could be stored. If this happens, it would allow doctors to compare mutations between patients to help plan treatment.

The chief medical officer for England said genetics was “terrifically exciting” and would have an “increasingly important role” in areas such as cancer screening. However, she was worried by some of the consequences; such as telling a patient they had a low risk of getting lung cancer therefore giving them “a licence to smoke”.

Heart attacks halved in the last decade

According to a study from Oxford University, the death rate from heart attacks has halved in the last decade. The study included a research of more than 800,000 men and women who had heart attacks between 2002 and 2010.

After the data had been gathered from 841,175 people, the data was compared with the years 2002 and 2010. The conclusion reached was that death rates fell by 50% in men and 53% in women. 

Peter Weissburg commented on the outcome of the study by saying; “This impressive fall in death rates is due partly to the prevention of heart attacks by better management of risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol but also due partly to better treatment of heart attack patients when they arrive at hospital.”

Alcohol deaths increase slightly

According to new and official figures, alcohol related deaths rose slightly between 2009 and 2012. The number of deaths related to drinking has gone from 8,664 to 8,790 – a rise of 126 mainly due to more deaths in men.

The figures are not a huge worry because they now cancel out the slight fall in alcohol related deaths between 2008 and 2009. However, the death rate still remains high at 18 per 100,000 men dying from alcohol related deaths & 8 per 100,000 women dying from alcohol related deaths.

The public health minister for England said “Next month, we are launching new Change4Life adverts which, for the first time, will help people understand the damage too much drinking can do to our health.

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