Probably the most famous WB is Stephen Bolsin, the cardiac anaesthetist that was highly concerned by very high mortality rates in paediatric ❤ surgery in Bristol in late 1980s / early 1990s
He had to leave his job & could not find another job in 🇬🇧
So he emigrated to Australia. The entire concept of 'clinical governance' largely originated due to his work and the subsequent Kennedy report
Cardiologists in 🇬🇧 will undoubtedly recall the awful case of Dr Raj Mattu who also lost his career & faced a 10 year (!!) legal battle to clear his name & win damages for unfair dismissal
Yes he won £1.2m, but his legal costs were £1.4m...
Dr Mattu raised concerns about the practice of putting 5 patients in bays intended for 4 beds
He attended a cardiac arrest of a young man that the team couldn't save due to inability to access his bed, move it, suction wouldn't reach, defibrillator wouldn't reach etc
Harrowing
The team lodged an internal complaint. Concerns were also raised when the CQC visited. The subsequent CQC report said the hospital had some of the worst safety practices they had ever encountered
The hospital's CEO dismissed it & denied that their '5 in 4' policy was harmful
Mattu went public, giving an interview on BBC Radio 4
The rest is history. But the Hospital managers did make nearly 200 complaints about him to the regulator and even police - every single one of which was investigated and proven untrue
There are MANY other examples including the ongoing case of Dr Chris Day
The NHS has a truly awful track record of how it treats those that raise concerns about quality of care / patient safety
You'd think such people would be praised, thanked for highlighting the issues...
Instead history shows us that NHS managers tend to deny, ignore, smear, oppose and then often falsely make countercomplaints about the WB, to deflect any criticisms
So much has been said & written about how whistleblowers 'must be treated better'
Has anything actually changed?
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First talk from Prof Takkenberg, who needs no introduction to any of you. A very important talk in which she questioned the primacy of RCTs and spoke up on the importance of 'real world' registry data, often dismissed as poor quality
If someone has already lived far past the average life expectancy in their country and is now into their 90s, can we *promise* the patient that TAVI will make them live longer?
In our centre, we feel that patients >90 need to be very motivated to have a procedure
This is a 🧵all about Transcatheter Mitral Valve Implantation (TMVI). If you don't know a lot about this and want to learn more - read on! This is a summary of a great expert focus session
First talk from Dr Gry Dahle (Oslo), on why TMVI is not the same as TAVI
TAVI has revolutionised treatment of aortic stenosis; TMVI is further behind largely due to anaromical complexity of treating the MV compared to the AV - the AV valves are much more complex than the semilunar valves!
Abstract session on Hot Topics in Transcatheter Therapies
Presentation from Dr Justin Robinson on use of TAVI in patients with very large aortic annuli - Results from the Michigan TAVI Quality Collaborative
#EACTS2021
Methods here: just over 200 patients with aortic annuli in excess of the normal ranges for both the Edwards Sapien and Medtronic Corevalve systems