June 4th was a ‘red letter’ day for me. My book, “Tales of a Flying Doctor” was published. It is, I hope, an entertaining story, leading from life in 1960’s Medical School (in my case, The London Hospital – including cycling round Whitechapel and Cable Street on a London Hospital ‘grocery’ bike, delivering babies), leading to the description of Hughes Syndrome and its role in pregnancy and a number of medical conditions.
Our Charity (GHIC) has a number of signed copies for sale and, of course, it is also available on Amazon.
Covid is still affecting medical life and practice (like many doctors, I hate with a passion the use of “diagnosis by telephone”, and suspect that, in part, it is here to stay).
As far as national and international medical meetings are concerned, life is ‘zoom-laden’. However, things are beginning to improve.
Earlier this week, the annual postgraduate meeting “Ten Topics in Rheumatology” was held here in London : a wonderful 2-day course organised by Professor Chris Edwards and his team from the London Lupus Centre.
The meeting was a ‘hybrid’ with 150 doctors attending live and 210 ‘virtual’ attendees. Social distancing, with many of the speakers and attendees commenting on how good it was to return to a ‘live’ meeting at last.
‘Ten Topics’ is now a worldwide event, with regular ‘Ten Topics’ meetings in Barcelona, Damascus, Hong Kong, Italy (Rome and Genoa), and South America (Cordoba and Buenos Aires). Later this year “Ten Topics from the Centre of the World” is planned in Madeira by Teresa Fabia, widow of Jorge Martin, Consultant Rheumatologist there, who sadly died last year. I’m preparing my zoom talk now.
Finally, the monthly international journal ‘LUPUS’ is now in its 40th year – a journal which publishes not only on ‘lupus around the world’ but on Hughes Syndrome as well.
Thanks to Sage, the publishers of LUPUS, I am sending one or two hopefully relevant flagged references to our website each month.
This month we received the news that the ‘impact factor’ for LUPUS had reached its highest level to date (the ‘impact factor’ being broadly the number of ‘quotes’ received relating to published articles).
Finally, I am not including a ‘Patient of the Month’ this time, but am putting out a plea to our members who feel that in some way (e.g. articles, photos, fundraising, suggestions) they can contribute to our young charity.
Professor Graham Hughes MD MRCP