Scottish Medical Researchers Win RCGP Awards

Two Scottish research teams funded by the CSO have been awarded prizes recognising the quality of their groundbreaking work by the Royal College of General Practitioners.

In the field of cancer research, Dr Peter Murchie and colleagues at the University of Aberdeen found that GPs can effectively perform biopsies to test for melanoma without leading to poorer long term outcomes for patients. They demonstrated that patients who have their initial diagnostic excision biopsy in primary care experience fewer subsequent hospital admissions and fewer days in hospital.

In the ‘Urgent Care, Infections, Respiratory and Gastroenterology’ category, the University of Edinburgh’s Dr Hillary Pinnock and her team were awarded for work on a randomised controlled trial that looked into the effectiveness of telemonitoring – when integrated into existing clinical services – on hospital admission for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. It found that telemonitoring in this context was not effective in postponing admissions and did not improve patients’ quality of life.

Read more on the Royal College of General Practitioners website