IN MARCH Michelmores reported the settlement of another claim in the Bristol heart surgery scandal by South West Strategic Health Authority. The settlement figure was equivalent to a £5.5m lump sum.
The latest case concerned CD, a 24-year-old client of Michelmores partner Laurence Vick – who was joint lead solicitor to the Bristol Heart Children Action Group – and Michael Vian Clark.
MR ARTHUR NYLANDER, a consultant ophthalmologist at East Lancashire NHS who also acts as an expert witness in the subject, has been honoured as a ‘Premiere Member’ by Emerald Who’s Who for Executives and Professionals for showing commitment, leadership and excellence in all aspects of ophthalmology.
Mr Nylander graduated from the Medical School at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria in 1980. In 1982, he moved to the UK and trained in ophthalmology. He was appointed a consultant ophthalmologist for the then-Burnley NHS Trust in November 1996. He was the Royal College Tutor in Ophthalmology for the trust from April 1990 to August 2007.
TV’S DANGERFIELD is probably the best known UK ‘police surgeon’ (the former colloquial name for the present day ‘forensic physician’) and partly comparable to the USA’s Quincy. The reality, however, is that I spend most of my time examining detainees held in police custody to establish their medical and psychological fitness to be detained, to be charged and to be interviewed by the police.
The German chemist Paracelsus is widely credited with being the ‘father’ of modern toxicology. It was he who coined the famous maxim “The dose makes the poison”, although earlier texts are known. Thus, paracetamol is safe when the recommended dose is taken to relieve pain, but very dangerous in overdose.
Drug testing using hair shows what drugs have been used over an extended time-frame of months, rather than days – which is the timeframe associated with urine and saliva (oral fluid) testing. It is much more sensitive to occasional and intermittent use: where urine testing might miss a ‘party habit’ every two weeks, hair testing will not. It is that much-improved confidence of detection that established the value of hair testing in children-at-risk cases.
