Pomegranate Health
Pomegranate Health is a podcast about the culture of medicine. You'll hear clinicians, researchers and advocates discuss all aspects of professionalism and quality improvement in healthcare. This includes clinical ethics, diagnostic bias, better communication and more equitable systems. For a sampler of these diverse themes of professional practice take a listen to Episode 132 and Episode 125.
If RACP is your CPD home, you can log time spent listening to each episode with the "Add activity to MyCPD" button. And if you're a Basic Physician Trainee, the [Case Report] series might help you prepare for your long case clinical exams.
This is also the home of [IMJ On-Air], featuring authors from the Internal Medicine Journal sharing their latest research. Meanwhile, the [Journal Club] episodes give RACP members a place to talk through their research published in other academic journals.
Feel free to send feedback and suggestions by email at podcast@racp.edu.au.
Episodes
142 episodes
[Case Report] 75 yo with a porcelain aorta
A 75 year-old man with severe aortic stenosis is deemed unsuitable for surgery on the basis of a porcelain aorta detected with cross-sectional imaging. The patient had, a decade earlier, been diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy after pre...
•
Episode 142
•
30:10
Ep141: Space Medicine Part 2- really remote practice
The record for the longest space-flight is held by physician-cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov. Back in 1994-95, he spent 437 days on the Mir space station and grew 4 centimetres in height through elongation of his spine in micro-gravity. Polyakov had ...
•
Episode 141
•
41:11
Ep140: Space Medicine Part 1- radiation and retinopathy
In 2027, NASA’s is planning to land astronauts on the moon for the first time in 53 years with the expectation that there will be a permanent base there by the early 2030s. And the ever-humble Elon Musk reckons he’ll be sending people to Mars b...
•
Episode 140
•
37:55
[Case Report] 72yo with anterior uveitis
A 72-year-old female presents to an Adelaide emergency department with bilateral eye pain and redness lasting several days. She has a history of hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and age-related macular degeneration for which she has received ...
•
Episode 139
•
29:25
Ep138: Amyloid busters- the benefit and the burden
Australia has just approved a second amyloid-targeting therapy for patients with incipient Alzheimer’s dementia. Lecanemab (Leqembi) now joins donanemab (Kisunla) on the Australian Registry of Therapeutic Goods but the impact of both has been m...
•
Episode 138
•
56:04
[Case Report] 27yo with left limb weakness and a mediastinal mass
A 27-year-old male wakes up with weakness in the left arm and leg and gets himself admitted at Royal Adelaide Hospital. Shockingly, for an otherwise well young man with no significant medical history, a right middle cerebral artery acute ischae...
•
Episode 137
•
23:18
[IMJ On-Air] DKA and insulin infusion protocols
Diabetic ketoacidosis can be life-threatening but there’s some variability in the way it’s managed between health settings. Intervention involves intravenous insulin administration, hydration, electrolyte replacement and treatment of the underl...
•
Episode 136
•
44:49
Ep135: “Wherefore a Pomegranate?” and other classics from the last ten years
Pomegranate Health has been streaming since June 2015, so we’re going to share a few more classic eps from the last ten years. First up, presenter Mic Cavazzini digs deep to find the origins of the pomegranate, featured not just on this podcast...
•
Episode 135
•
32:05
[IMJ On-Air] Microbleeds and Memory
Cerebral microbleeds are a finding on MRI that are usually asymptomatic. There are two main aetiological pathways, one occurring as a result of uncontrolled hypertension and the other from the accumulation of amyloid-beta peptide. The link betw...
•
Episode 134
•
46:44
[Case Report] 46yo with psychosis and cold intolerance
A 46-year old man is admitted to hospital following a first time presentation of psychosis that involved barricading himself inside a neighbour’s home. At admission he appears disorganised with slow movements and speech. His rambling reveals bi...
•
Episode 133
•
23:10
Ep132: Ten Years of Pomegranate Health
Pomegranate Health marks ten years of podcasting since its launch in June 2015. This episode will be one of two samplers that dip into the back catalogue of 131 episodes to showcase some of the most compelling stories. You’ll hear how podcast t...
•
Episode 132
•
34:52
Ep131: The semantics of CPR
In this podcast we discuss low-value care that has emerged from a decay in the specificity of the terms “cardiac arrest” and “cardiopulmonary resuscitation.” Patients who experience cardiac arrest in hospital are rarely more than a minute or tw...
•
Episode 131
•
55:17
Ep130: "The motherhood penalty"
Despite filling more than half of places in Australian medical schools, women represent 45 per cent of all medical practitioners and just 36 per cent of specialists. Female representation dwindles further in many areas of clinical leadership, p...
•
Episode 130
•
54:55
[Case Report] 65yo with ST elevation during AF ablation procedure
ST elevation is clearly a worrying finding that can herald life-threatening conditions, such as ST elevation myocardial infarction. But not all ST-elevations are created equal, and Trainees would benefit from considering a broader number of cau...
•
Episode 129
•
26:21
Ep128: Brushing off the cobwebs
There is evidence that six months or more off the job leads to some loss of practical skills and knowledge and certainly, many doctors report a loss of self-confidence. People take time out from medical practice for many different reasons but c...
•
Episode 128
•
31:36
[Case Report] 74yo with dyspnoea after AF ablation
In this episode we hear about an emergency presentation to a South Australian hospital, of a 74-year-old male with shortness of breath. The curve ball is that he had undergone ablation for drug-refractory atrial fibrillation less than two weeks...
•
Episode 127
•
27:35
Ep126: Trying times for Māori medics
In Aotearoa-New Zealand, the proportion of doctors identifying as Māori has doubled from where it was a decade ago to over 5 percent. But there is still a long way to go before the workforce is representative of the broader population which is ...
•
Episode 126
•
45:21
[Case Report] 52yo with hand clumsiness after Chiari operation
This case report comes to you from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a huge teaching hospital that serves the Harvard Medical School. The 52-year-old female presented with clumsiness and paresthesia of the right hand that had persisted fo...
•
Episode 125
•
27:33
Ep124: Pleural medicine comes of age
Professor Gary Lee established the first dedicated pleural service in the southern hemisphere in 2009, at the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth. He says that pleural disease has finally come to be regarded as an area of subspeciality inter...
•
Episode 124
•
57:51
[Case Report] 42yo male with fever following liver transplant
This case report describes a 42-year-old male from Arizona with a complex course characterised by fever following an orthotopic liver transplant. A general approach to fever in the post-transplant patient is discussed, along with specific consi...
•
Episode 123
•
26:59
Ep122: Funding pan-cancer therapies
In the previous episode we heard how some rationally-designed therapies work on almost any cancer with the right molecular signature. Tumour-agnostic medications could be godsend for patients with rare cancers which have classically been overlo...
•
Episode 122
•
50:05
Ep121: Precision oncology explained
The genomic understanding of cancer has transformed a tissue-based classification model that had been dominant for 150 years or more. The last three decades have seen highly targeted therapies developed at blistering pace, and unprecedented imp...
•
Episode 121
•
46:39
[Case Report] 35yo male with proximal weakness and skin changes
This case report describes a 35-year-old Caucasian male presenting with 5 weeks of progressive weakness in the proximal limbs and trunk and associated changes to the skin. The man was previously well and not taking any regular medications. Ther...
•
Episode 120
•
30:16
[Case Report] 47yo with rapidly progressive respiratory failure requiring ECMO
In 2019 a man was referred to Royal Adelaide Hospital with worsening breathlessness and a productive cough. He was a 47 year old electrician with a history of tobacco smoking who’d been well before the onset of symptoms. Over a couple of admiss...
•
Episode 119
•
34:01
[Journal Club] Thrombolysis up to 24hr after ischaemic stroke
Thrombectomy for acute ischaemic stroke has undergone great advances in the last decade, but the expertise and technology is restricted to tertiary hospitals. Outside of large metropolitan centres, thrombolytic treatment can buy a patient t...
•
Episode 118
•
43:02
