A British hospital is the first in the world to use a sponge on a string to detect oesophageal cancer in a Covid-safe way.
It allows health workers to collect cell samples from the food pipe without the need for an endoscopy, biopsy or sedation.
Endoscopies, which involve passing a thin tube containing a camera and light into the body, were suspended during the pandemic because they can cause the virus to be sprayed into the air.
But University College London Hospital continued to assess patients by switching to the pioneering Cytosponge.
It will now be the hospital s usual standard of care after proving quicker, cheaper and more effective at detecting disease.
Low-cost breathing aids developed by Mercedes High Performance Powertrains, University College London and University College London Hospital have been shipped to hospitals around the world in a life-saving partnership.
CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) devices were used in the first COVID-19 outbreaks to keep patients off invasive ventilators in China and Italy, but they were in short supply in the UK – and difficult to mass manufacture cheaply and quickly.
It took just 100 hours from the first meeting, between Mercedes HPP engineers, and clinicians from UCL and UCLH, to produce the first UCL-Ventura CPAP device ahead of the 2020 season, with Mercedes’ Brixworth factory repurposed to manufacture them.
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The downslope of the Covid crisis is proving to be its own bumpy ride and there’s no telling yet how long it will last. We’ve learned a tremendous amount about the disease itself, but in terms of grasping the impact of lingering post-Covid Syndrome, or Long Covid as it’s often called, we’re just getting started.
As hospital admissions from Covid decline, clinics dealing with post-Covid effects are being flooded with demand and questions around treatment are proliferating. Addressing the problem will require more resources at a time when health-care systems are tapped out. That’s hard in the UK, where hospital executives say they will have to cut back services if the Treasury can’t find more funds than what Chancellor Rishi Sunak put in last week’s budget.
A large-scale vaccination centre has been set up at the Islington Business Design Centre
- Credit: Theo Tzia
A large-scale NHS coronavirus vaccination hub has been set up at the Islington Business Design Centre.
Run by University College London Hospital (UCLH), the centre is currently ramping up to vaccinate about 2,000 people daily.
Rows of private booths have been built in the large exhibition hall off Upper Street in Angel, where people give their consent to be immunised before receiving their jab.
Rows of private booths have been built in the large exhibition hall off Upper Street in Angel
- Credit: Theo Tzia