It is important that women conceive while they are a healthy weight and also gain the recommended amount of weight during pregnancy, a study in the Journal of Nutrition (2006;136: 140-6) says. In white women, excessive weight gain during pregnancy is associated with stopping breast feeding early, whatever their body mass index before pregnancy.

Alerting the emergency department that a patient with a suspected heart attack was being brought in by ambulance produced a significant reduction in door to needle times in Glasgow, where thrombolysis is carried out in the Royal Infirmary's emergency department (Emergency Medicine Journal 2006;23: 79-81). Half of the patients in the pre-change (no alert) group had a door to needle time of under 30 minutes, compared with 91% of the post-change (alert) group (P = 0.005).

A Swiss retrospective analysis of colonoscopies, done over nine years on people aged > 50 years with symptoms indicative of colorectal cancer, reports that a cancer was found in 12.3% of the group and that most of the cancers were advanced (Swiss Medical Weekly 2005;135: 679-83). The authors say that to detect cancer at …