Tomorrow's Word & Thrombolysis

Good old Tomorrow's World. Live every week from BBC tv Centre, it was 30 minutes of what's new on science, health & gadgets. The show had a clunky, parochial attitude but when I was a kid I loved it, which explains a lot...

So I was quite happy to 'find' an old episode from 1983 on the interweb and watched it for amusement to see if it was as I remembered. I was quite excited when they started this little report on thrombolysis.

Now if you (like me) work in emergency medicine, you will know that "clot-busting" or thrombolysis has revolutionised the front line treatment of "heart attacks" or myocardial infarction. In the NHS it's all about giving the thrombolysis medicine within 30 minutes of the ambulance call, it you're interested you can peruse this: http://www.dh.gov.uk/PolicyAndGuidance/HealthAndSocialCareTopics/CoronaryHear... ...which also address the one gold standard better than thrombolysis: coronary angioplasty, threading a catheter through your blood vessels to open up the blockages in the heart vessels.

So watching Tomorrow's World, sandwiched between a report on taxis which can accept credit cards (wow!) and a review of the Sinclair C5 was this three minute review of a change in medical care which went on to save thousands of lives. In retrospect, it's a nice historical piece. And gasp as Peter McCann jabs his finger with a needle on live tv, continues to bleed for the rest of the report and then, really irresponsibly considering he has an open wound, purposely pours out a test tube of someone else's blood without wearing gloves. And the bit where he says that the drug only works where the clots are is a bit of a lie, thrombolysis can cause nasty bleeding, including strokes. Good old Tomorrow's World...

FYI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrombolysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronary_angioplasty

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• heart
• attack
• myocardial
• infarction
• MI
• thrombolysis
• emergency
• medicine
• nhs
• A&E
• ER
• ED
• streptokinase
• angioplasty
• elvis

[bazza0173]

"bang goes the theory" just doesn't match up to TW

[lifeline86]

Thrombolytic Therapy.. Very Useful..

[abhipillai80]

It is Tissue Plasminogen Activator or tpa

[maximusuper]

What is the drug?

[rhyzzynne]

can i have this vid??

[jacklav1]

Can you imagine a programme getting into this much scientific depth now? God bless Tomorrow's World.

[seancoppinger]

classic. I work as a nurse and tend to take stuff like this for granted now

[dangrey101]

I watched an episode of "Fight for Life" recently. It was all 30 second sound-bite clips, dramatic music, angst-ridden voice-overs and "special effects" which don't show you anything except pretend goo.

If somebody broadcast a show like TW today people would flock to it for the relief from dumbed-down, dull TV.

[annoianoid]

T.W. was brilliant, anyone remember the paint that came as a block you rubbed on the wall? wonder why that never took off...

i'd buy a dvd of the best bits in a flash.

[ariennecoerlin]

What a fantastic clip! Tomorrow's World was an absolute must-see for everyone, whether they were right or wrong - having read your info for this video it's quite shocking that he never took any precautions.