Press releases Monday 6 December to Friday 10 December 2010

Please remember to credit the BMJ as source when publicising an article and to tell your readers that they can read its full text on the journal's website (http://www.bmj.com).

• (1) Lighter bikes may not reduce commuting time
• (2) Doctors don’t need to fear red heads
• (3) A new surgical tool – the IKEA pencil

(1) Lighter bikes may not reduce commuting time

(Bicycle weight and commuting time: randomised trial)
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/doi/10.1136/bmj.c6801

A light-weight bike that costs around £1000 may not get you to work any quicker than a similar, yet heavier and cheaper model, finds research in the Christmas issue published on bmj.com today.

A keen cyclist since childhood, the author Dr Jeremy Groves, owns two bikes. One a second hand 13.5 kg steel framed bike bought for £50 and the other a brand new 9.5 kg carbon framed bike that cost £1000.

When Dr Groves, a consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care at Chesterfield Royal Hospital, realised his new bike took 43 minutes to get him to work rather than the 44 minutes it took on his old bike he questioned whether the difference in cost was worth it.

Dr Groves believed the only way to be certain which bike was faster was to set up a randomised trial.

For six months (January 2010 to July 2010) the author undertook the same journey on both bikes, tossing a £1 coin to decide which bike to use before setting off from home. The trip included a dual carriageway, country lanes, farm track and an up hill trek of 400 metres.

Identical lights were used on each bike as well as appropriate clothing for the weather conditions on the day of the journey.

The average journey on the steel framed bike was one hour and 47 minutes (a round trip of 27 miles to work and back) and the average time for the new carbon framed bike was one hour and 48 minutes.

While a 30% reduction in cycle weight may seem large, concludes the author, the results show that there is no measurable difference in commuting time between his light and heavy bikes. He adds that "a reduction in the weight of the cyclist rather than that of the bicycle may deliver greater benefit at reduced cost".

Dr Groves comments: "I bought an expensive bike for a couple of reasons. The main one was because I thought I would have a faster daily commute. The second was that, as I wasn't spending the money on a car, the new bike was essentially paying for itself. This study has shown that spending a lot of money on a bicycle for commuting is not necessarily going to get you to work more quickly. This is good news as I appreciate that £1000 for a bicycle is out of the range of many peoples pockets. Cycling for me is a great hobby. It gets me out in the fresh air, keeps me healthy, is carbon neutral and, provided I don't buy any more bikes(!), is a cost effective way to travel."

Contact:
Jeremy Groves, Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Chesterfield Royal Hospital, Chesterfield, UK
Email: Jeremy.groves@nhs.net

(2) Doctors don’t need to fear red heads
(Red for danger: the effects of red hair in surgical practice)
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/doi/10.1136/bmj.c6931

A study in the BMJ's Christmas issue published on bmj.com today confirms that there is no need for doctors to fear red heads.

The research concludes that, contrary to popular belief, people with red hair do not bleed any more than other patients.

The authors, led by surgeon Jonathan Barry from Morriston Hospital in Swansea, say that "red haired patients are traditionally regarded with a degree of trepidation by surgeons and anaesthetists alike due to a reputation for excessive bleeding, reduced pain threshold and a propensity to develop hernias".

Globally around 1-2% of the general population have red hair, this rises to 2-6% in the Northern hemisphere and is highest in Scotland where as many as 13% are red heads with at least 40% carrying the recessive red hair gene.

Barry and colleagues say that there have been anecdotal reports about the clinical behaviour of red heads with claims of increased bleeding.

However, in their review of existing scientific literature on this issue, they found no robust evidence to support these anecdotes.

Some small studies found that when undergoing surgery people with red hair needed more anaesthetic than other patients. And another study indicated that red heads were more sensitive to cold and heat pain than the control group.

In conclusion, the authors say that red heads have no greater risk during surgery than the rest of the population.

Contact:
Jonathan Barry, Consultant Surgeon, Department of General Surgery, Morriston Hospital, Swansea, Wales, UK
Email: jbarry@doctors.org.uk

(3) A new surgical tool – the IKEA pencil
(The IKEA pencil: A surprising find in the NHS)
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/doi/10.1136/mj.c6595

IKEA pencils are better at marking out cuts in the bone for facial and head surgery than traditional felt tipped pens, say two surgeons in the Christmas issue published on bmj.com today.

Karen Eley, from the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford, and Stephen Watt-Smith, from the Department of Maxillofacial Surgery at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, say that while the popularity of the IKEA pencil is widely known - there is a Facebook page called "Ikea pencil stealing appreciation" – sourcing pencils from IKEA for surgery has surprised doctors.

They say "as popular as these little pencils are, we were still surprised to be handed one halfway through a surgical case . . . the use of a pencil to mark osteotomy cuts in craniofacial and maxillofacial surgery is well established, proving superior to methylene, Bonney's blue and felt tipped skin markers that struggle to transfer an ink mark to bone, or are washed away by irrigation or tissue fluids".

Unfortunately, they say, repeated sterilisation means that some of the pencils split but even this problem has been overcome by wrapping silicon cuffs around the pencil.

Perhaps the designers at IKEA could act on this idea, suggest the authors.

Contact:
Karen Eley, Research Fellow, Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, University of Oxford, UK
Email: karen.a.eley@gmail.com

Emma Dickinson
Tel: +44 (0)20 7383 6529
Email: edickinson@bma.org.uk

Press Office telephone : 020 7383 6254 (Weekdays : 0900hrs - 1800hrs)
British Medical Association
BMA House, Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9JP

and from:

the EurekAlert website, run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (http://www.eurekalert.org)
http://intranet.bmj.com/departments/dept-bmj/bmj-team-resources/web-team-resources/General_blogging_principles.doc