Health

This First Person column is the experience of Luke Galati, who lives in Toronto. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. The psychiatric ward is a place no one wants to be. But it's a place you might need to be at some point if you live with a mental health condition. There's nothing shameful about admitting that sometimes you need help. In 2023, I spent three months at a hospital in downtown Toronto. I live with bipolar 1 disorder. The best way to explain what I've gone through when I'm unwell is that I feel the highs more than the lows of others who might have depression. I've gone through bouts of mania, where I lose touch with reality. I think that people who love me are out to get me. I act irrationally. But inside my mind, my world makes total sense...

This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.Despite a rule that requires sex and gender to be considered when funding medical research in Canada, new research shows the number of grants for women's health studies hasn't budged in five years, something doctors say has serious implications for their patients.The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has mandated the inclusion of sex and gender as criteria for awarding grants since 2010. Despite that, a group of researchers found in 2023 that less than six per cent of Canadian health research funding went to women's health. Now, their new study is also analyzing how na...

Staff at a hospital in Saint-Jérôme, Que., say the emergency room was not prepared to handle a patient like Normand Meunier, a quadriplegic man who developed a severe bedsore during his stay in January 2024.Days into the coroner's inquiry into the death of Meunier — who chose to pursue medical assistance in dying as a result of the massive wound — staff who treated him testified about his care and the hospital resources available at the time.Meunier spent four days on a stretcher in the Saint-Jérôme Hospital's emergency room after he arrived with a respiratory virus.His partner, Sylvie Brosseau, says without access to a special mattress, Meunier developed a major pressure sore on his buttocks that eventually worsened and stretched down to his bone and muscle. It made his recovery and progn...

U.S. and European health regulators are warning the public of possible health risks linked to finasteride, a popular hair-loss drug. The European Medicines Agency issued an alert on Thursday, stating it had confirmed suicidal thoughts as a side effect of finasteride tablets. The European regulator announced it would be implementing new measures to warn and protect the public. This comes following an alert issued by U.S. health regulators in late April, which warned against the possibility of sexual dysfunction and depression linked to topical finasteride — a newer version of the medication that's applied directly to the skin. "There is no FDA-approved topical formulation of finasteride," the agency said in the alert, adding that the safety, effectiveness, or quality of these products has n...

Going to the doctor can involve sharing your most personal information, including details about your health, medical history and prescriptions. It all ends up in your medical record — but a new study by researchers at Women's College Hospital in Toronto found that in some cases, private companies are accessing parts of that data and selling it to pharmaceutical companies. "This is really an area where we need transparency," said the study's lead author, Dr. Sheryl Spithoff.The study, published in JAMA Network Open, examined how the medical record industry works in Canada and how patient data flows between different private entities.  Through a series of 19 interviews, the researchers concluded "chains of for-profit primary care clinics, physicians, commercial data brokers and pharmaceutica...

The IWK is launching a new research unit aimed at helping patients with breast cancer across Nova Scotia.The idea came from Dr. Gregory Knapp, a surgical oncologist at the IWK and Victoria General Hospital who moved back to Halifax in 2020 after fellowships in New York and Calgary.Knapp said he found it jarring to read reports from the Canadian Cancer Society that revealed Nova Scotia has the lowest survival rate in the country for those diagnosed with breast cancer."I realized that I was going to be doing 50 per cent of my practice focused on breast cancer, and we didn't have provincial or even really local clinical outcomes," he said.The Canadian Cancer Society says one in eight Canadian women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. The society estimated that 185 Nova Scotians woul...

Rebecca Archer lovingly places a pair of small glasses on a shelf filled with memorabilia like trinkets and photos. They belonged to her 10-year-old daughter, Renae, who suddenly died after a measles infection."She was just really intelligent. Just a really happy child, always smiling," she remembers.Renae was just five months old when she got the measles – too young to be vaccinated, but unable to avoid being exposed during an outbreak in Manchester, England, in 2013.The infant was hospitalized, but recovered. For the next 10 years, Renae had no other medical issues, her mom says. Renae Archer was an infant when she was infected with measles: too young to be vaccinated against the virus, but unable to avoid the outbreak in Manchester, England, where her family lives. (Submitted by Rebecc...

Health Minister Christian Dubé tabled a bill on Thursday that would give the Quebec government the authority to regulate how health professionals are compensated, with the goal of getting them to take on more patients. Bill 106, officially titled An Act mainly to establish the collective responsibility and the accountability of physicians with respect to improvement of access to medical services, would have family doctors be compensated by capitation payment, that is to say, through a fixed payment based on the number of patients they take on and the care provided.Doctors would also receive an hourly rate for time spent with patients, such as for physician-patient interactions through family medicine groups (GMFs) and at clinics. At a news conference on Thursday, Dubé said the bill would l...

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has issued a recall for jumbo pumpkin seeds from the brand Organic Traditions due to possible salmonella contamination.The agency is warning the public not to eat, sell or serve the recalled products, according to a notice issued nationally.The affected products include: Organic Traditions brand Jumbo Pumpkin Seeds (227 g) Organic Traditions brand Jumbo Pumpkin Seeds (454 g) The agency said food contaminated with salmonella can still make you sick, even if it doesn't look or smell spoiled.The recall notice added salmonella can cause serious and sometimes deadly infections in young children, pregnant people, seniors and people with weakened immune systems.In healthy people, short-term salmonella symptoms can appear as fever, headache, vomiting, nause...

An expert in emergency medicine testified at the Sidney McIntyre-Starko coroner's inquest that software used by British Columbia 911 operators takes too long to recommend potentially life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Dr. Michael Kurz said the medical priority dispatch system (MPDS) that guides 911 call-takers in their over-the-phone response does not meet the "agreed-upon standard of care.""I am sure that if you make it down the protocols in MPDS, there are instructions for CPR," said Kurz, an emergency physician and professor of medicine at the University of Chicago."The concern I have — and why I'm testifying today —  is because I think the order in which they choose to do it is incorrect."MPDS is proprietary software made by a Salt Lake City company and licensed in B.C. T...