The Athletic ECG: A Line of Defense Against Misinterpretation.

A 17-year-old competitive athlete was found to have a minor electrocardiogram abnormality on routine screening. Cardiac magnetic resonance revealed evidence of marked myocarditis, allowing a subsequent safe abstinence from exercise. The case highlights the importance of careful electrocardiogram interpretation, especially in athletes, where physiologic adaptive changes can pose a diagnostic challenge. (Level of Difficulty: Intermediate.).

Recorded infection control messages delay inter-professional communication but are not associated with COVID-19 prevalence or mortality: insights from a national switchboard analysis.

Appropriate dissemination of information to the general public is a key component of the pandemic response. In 2018, recorded infection control advice messages were affixed to 30% of England's automated hospital switchboards during the seasonal influenza and norovirus outbreaks. As the majority of messages were mandatory for all callers, healthcare professionals using the hospital switchboard - including during time-critical emergencies - had their enquiries significantly delayed by these measures. Importantly, published analyses did not demonstrate an association between these messages and patient outcomes. As of May 2020, 85% of NHS trusts made use of infection control messages; on average, these delayed healthcare professionals by 59.4 seconds per call, but had no clear association with patient outcomes from COVID-19. An ongoing national switchboard quality improvement project seeks to establish a gold standard whereby healthcare professionals with urgent enquiries can press 'X' to skip past infection control messages and have their calls triaged immediately.

Sudden sex hormone withdrawal and the effects on body composition in late pubertal adolescents with gender dysphoria.

Background Sex hormones initiate profound physical and physiological changes during the pubertal process, but to what extent are they responsible for continuing the body composition changes of late adolescence and what happens to body composition on sudden sex hormone withdrawal? Methods Thirty-six healthy, phenotypically and chromosomally normal late and post-pubertal individuals aged 15-17 years with gender dysphoria (transgirls - birth-registered males identifying as female n = 11; and transboys - birth-registered females identifying as male n = 25) underwent Tanita body composition analysis at 0, 6 and 12 months during reproductive hormone suppression with Triptorelin as part of the standard therapeutic protocol. Results and conclusions In the transgirl cohort, paired t-test analysis demonstrated a significant decrease in height and lean mass standard deviation scores over the 12-month period, going against an expected trajectory over that time. In contrast, oestrogen suppression appeared not to affect the body composition of transboys; their measurements were not significantly different at baseline and after 12 months of treatment. The withdrawal of sex hormone secretion does not appear to have a significant impact on female post-pubertal body composition, in contrast to that seen at the menopause. This suggests that other factors may preserve normal body balance in adolescents in the absence of sex steroids.

UK perspective on the changing landscape of non-invasive cardiac testing.

Objective: To document UK rates of exercise treadmill testing, functional stress testing and CT coronary angiography (CTCA). Specific aims were to determine how rates have changed in the context of changing guideline recommendations within the UK and to identify regional inequalities in the utilisation of testing modalities. Secondary objectives were to compare these trends with national data on revascularisation. Methods: 159 acute National Health Service trusts were served Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to provide total numbers of CTCA and functional imaging tests for each financial year from 2011-2012 to 2016-2017. Results: The FOI requests yielded data from 88% of Trusts, increasing from 81.9% in 2011-2012% to 92.1% in 2016-2017. Exercise treadmill tests (ETTs) were performed by over 97% of Trusts. ETT was the most commonly performed diagnostic test in the UK across the study period despite declining by 8.4%. Utilisation of non-invasive stress imaging tests increased by 80.9% during the same period. Myocardial perfusion scintigraphy and stress echocardiography increased by 25.8% and 73.9%, respectively. The 268% increase in CTCA scans was yet greater. Trends in test utilisation during the study period showed important regional differences between devolved nations. Comparably, only small changes in rates of invasive coronary angiography and revascularisation have been reported during the study period. Conclusion: Non-invasive imaging in UK Trusts has increased substantially since 2010 with only a small decline in use of the ETT and minimal changes in rates of invasive coronary angiography and revascularisation in the same time period.