The Pioneers • 2018 • episode "S1E3" • Surgeons: At the Edge of Life

58:59

After being diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of malignant melanoma - acral lentiginous melanoma - Dr George McGavin embarks on a highly emotional and deeply personal journey as he goes through treatment for his cancer. George’s treatment is targeted drug therapy, using drugs approved for use by the NHS only weeks before his diagnosis. During this journey, he is given unprecedented access to the process and science behind his medical treatment and diagnosis. He also meets some of the most highly regarded scientists in the field of cancer research in his quest to understand not just his disease but what the future holds as a whole for cancer treatment. Amongst them are Professor Sir Michael Stratton, director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute and chief executive officer of the Wellcome Genome Campus, whose work resulted in the discovery of the mutation in the B RAF gene responsible for his form of melanoma. George also travels to Houston, Texas to meet Professor James P Allison, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine, to find out about his pioneering work in the field of immunotherapy - the greatest breakthrough in cancer research in a century. Back home in his own hospital, he meets a unique group of stage four melanoma patients who owe their lives to Professor Allison’s work. Ultimately, his journey culminates when he receives his prognosis, after three months of treatment, which will determine his future. Will these groundbreaking drugs actually work?

2019 • Health

4:00

Our skin is the largest organ in our bodies, with a surface area of about 20 square feet in adults. When we are cut or wounded, our skin begins to repair itself through a complex, well-coordinated process. Sarthak Sinha takes us past the epidermis and into the dermis to investigate this regenerative response.

TED-Ed • Health

89:52

Delve into the digestive system with this lighthearted and informative documentary that demystifies the role gut health plays in our overall well-being.

2024 • Health

44:33

Lyme disease, a mysterious tick-borne illness, is the fastest spreading vector-borne disease in the United States, and over the past decade, the tick that carries Lyme has been spreading across Canada with alarming speed. Ticked Off: The Mystery of Lyme Disease, is a fascinating and eye-opening documentary that explores a disease that has devastating effects, is often misdiagnosed and mistreated, and continues to be mired in a medical controversy. More than 30,000 cases are reported in the USA every year, but the real number could be as high as 300,000. And despite hard evidence that the Lyme-carrying, deer tick has already established populations across Canada, some people claim that patients here are still being told that they cannot contract Lyme in this country. Doctors agree that if it’s caught early Lyme disease can usually be cured with two to four weeks of antibiotics. There are others who believe that if it’s not caught early, the infection can develop into a debilitating condition they call Chronic Lyme. Yet unlike West Nile, Encephalitis or SARS, where the medical profession and scientists joined forces to find better treatments or a cure, many patients, who claim to have chronic Lyme, say that they are being denied treatment and left to suffer. So why is this happening?

S53E02 • The Nature of Things • 2013 • Health

58:28

Many clinical trials target the nation's most acute health issues. With deaths from liver disease soaring by 40 per cent in a decade, more and more patients are waiting for vital liver transplants. There is a shortage of organ donors and many donated organs are rejected as only those in excellent condition are considered suitable for a transplant procedure. Surgeons Richard Laing and Thamara Perera are part of a team at QEHB trialling a revolutionary way to tackle this crisis, by maximising the number of donor organs that can be safely re-used. The film follows the trial every step of the way, as Richard receives a donor liver that would usually be rejected and tries to prove it is viable for transplant by rejuvenating and testing it on a perfusion machine. This machine sustains the liver by mimicking the supply of blood, oxygen and nutrients an organ receives inside a live, healthy human body. Once the donor liver has proved itself fit for transplant, the surgical team start to remove grandmother Connie O'Driscoll's severely diseased liver. Once the donor liver has been disconnected from the perfusion machine, they have just 20 minutes to place it in Connie's body and plumb it into the complex and delicate network of hepatic blood vessels.

S1E3 • Surgeons: At the Edge of Life • 2018 • Health

58:54

Fresh or processed, white or red - how does meat measure up? It's been getting a lot of bad press recently with new links to cancer and heart disease. But 98 per cent of us in the UK are still meat eaters. Chris Bavin, a greengrocer by trade and a carnivore by nature, wants to know if he can keep meat in his diet and stay healthy. He teams up with top scientists to put meat under the microscope and examine it as never before. They follow 40 volunteers on a groundbreaking study to find out exactly how much meat is good for us, test whether paying more for chicken makes it any better for us, discover a way to dramatically reduce the health risks associated with processed meats and reveal an unlikely lean supermeat that won't break the bank.

2016 • Health