Checkup for Fri Dec 16

A weekly round-up of news affecting your health.

UNREGISTERED DOCTORS DOING BOTOX

The Australian Medical Association (NSW) says it's "very concerning" that unregistered practitioners are performing procedures such as Botox injections and facial surgery.

"When it comes to cosmetic surgery performed by an unregistered practitioner, it is not worth risking your face over," it said.

Before undergoing any cosmetic procedure, patients should check the person administering the treatment is registered to do so.

They can check with their family doctor or on the websites of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, which has a list of all registered practitioners in NSW.

See: ahpra.gov.au

GARVAN'S "GAME-CHANGING" SPIN-OFF

A Sydney medical institute says its new company could reduce the need for pharmaceutical firms to spend millions of dollars on clinical trials.

The Garvan Institute of Medical Research's company Solvanix Pty Ltd will commercialise technology that was developed by its scientists to improve drug stability.

"At present, vast sums of money are being wasted because up to 30 to 50 per cent of drugs in development have stability issues, and many products are ultimately failing," Solvanix founder and chief scientific officer Daniel Christ said.

"As you can imagine, this failure rate considerably increases drug development costs.

"Our new technology will simply eliminate stability issues and associated costs."

The company has secured $2 million from Australia's Medical Research Commercialisation Fund.

Chris Smith, of Brandon Capital Partners, the venture capital firm that manages the MRCF, said the stabilising technology would be "a game-changing addition to the global antibody therapeutics industry".

FOLLOWING A BETTER SCRIPT

One in 10 prescriptions written by GPs contain an error, and this is an Australia-wide problem the federal government hopes to fix.

It has given Queensland researchers nearly $300,000 to develop new guidelines for assessing medical students and others who learn prescribing skills.

Project co-leader Queensland University of Technology's head of clinical sciences, Lisa Nissen, said prescribing was a complex task.

Research shows there are about 80,000 medication-related hospital admissions a year in Australia, and about 30,000 of those are preventable.

The most common incorrectly prescribed medications include anticoagulants, antirheumatics, antihypertensives, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and cardiovascular agents, Professor Nissen said.

"Students studying a range of disciplines at universities across the country learn prescribing skills, so the tools we develop will be comprehensive and of benefit to universities Australia-wide, but ultimately it's patients who will benefit the most," she said.

HOW WILL EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS COPE?

WA's health system is bracing itself for more hospital admissions in the coming years.

Emergency Department presentations in WA are expected to increase by more than a quarter from 2013 to 2018, a new study shows.

The increase is attributed to a growing and ageing population, increasing disease complexity and other social factors.

Co-author Daniel Fatovich, a fellow at the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, says the results can apply to the rest of Australia.

"Emergency department overcrowding already shows that the healthcare system is not adequate to cope with demand," Professor Fatovich said.

The study is published in Emergency Medicine Australasia.

TANTRUM TROUBLE

A child who takes longer to grow out of tantrums is more prone to antisocial behaviour in the future, a study shows.

While it's normal for kids to have tantrums, US researchers found that if they persist and are especially dramatic, the child may have conduct disorder.

CD is a psychological disorder diagnosed in childhood or adolescence, and can often lead to antisocial behaviour later in life.

About five per cent of US preschoolers have conduct disorder.

"In young children, violent and destructive behaviour that's deliberate really seems to be a key warning sign," said senior investigator Joan Luby of the Washington University school of medicine.

Early intervention and treatment is important, because children with untreated CD are at risk of developing a range of problems in adulthood, such as mental illness and substance abuse.