Pomegranate Health

Afleveringen

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  REWIND<< Medical fitness to drive 03.08.2026 46min

  This popular episode was first published in 2019. Australia and NZ are made up of sprawling cities and far-flung towns and driving is often viewed as a fundamental freedom. It can be hard for clinicians to challenge that freedom with patients who they consider unfit to drive safely. And harder still to deal with the consequences if a patient does have a crash. There are diagnoses that should raise red flags for driving fitness in various specialty areas, and a clinician can be drawn in...
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  [Contagious Conversations] Approaching HIV elimination 13.07.2026 45min

  This is the second episode of in the series, [Contagious Conversations] from the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases. Expert guests in this series will come from right across the interface of research, clinical care and public health. In today’s episode we look at the immense progress that has been made over three decades in the management of HIV. Once a fatal diagnosis, the disease can now be completely controlled by anti-retroviral therapy. Access to prophylactic treatment has als...
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  [RACP LIFT] What you need to know about metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease 30.06.2026 22min

  This episode is a teaser for RACP LIFT 2026, a series of in-person events to promote Learning, Innovation and Forward Thinking. Coming up on the 1st of August in Melbourne there will be a Rapid Fire Clinical Update on Respiratory medicine, infectious diseases and critical illness. And on the 20th In Brisbane another one themed around Palliative medicine and also population health. In March, the Sydney RACP offices hosed a meeting on cardiometabolic and vascular health, and the talk shared her...
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  REWIND<< Drug Interactions and deprescribing 15.06.2026 41min

  Adverse drug events cause 5-15% of admissions to hospital and drug-drug interactions make up about a fifth of these. Most common are pharmacodynamic situations where two drugs have a similar outcome thereby overdoing the intended outcome. Pharmacokinetic interactions are more complicated to understand as they’re more indirect. For example, while medications are cleared by oxidative metabolism in the liver and gut, there are many drugs that interfere with the function of the cytochrome enzymes...
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  Ep149: Could it be syphilis? 01.06.2026 41min

  Syphilis is often thought of as a disease from the historic literature, but in August last year, it was declared a Communicable Disease Incident of National Significance by Australia’s Chief Medical Officer. Case numbers have grown year on year since it became a notifiable disease in 2004, peaking at around six and a half thousand in 2023. Syphilis is sometimes described as ‘the great imitator’ because it can have so many different presentations. And it can hide away for years before re...
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  [Contagious Conversations] Responding to vaccine hesitancy 04.05.2026 50min

  Contagious Conversations is a new series brought to you by ASID, the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases. Once a month, these podcasts will explore evolving evidence and real-world challenges for the practice of ID medicine. The hope is that you’ll come away with practical knowledge to support your clinical confidence and continuous learning. Expert guests in this series will come from right across the interface of research, clinical care, and public health. Today we st...
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  REWIND<< Genomics for the generalist 21.04.2026 47min

  In Pomegranate &lt;&lt;REWIND&gt;&gt; we go back to some classic episodes from the last ten years that have stood the test of time. The first throwback takes us back to 2017 with episodes 20 and 21 titled “Genomics for the Generalist.” While there’s been a flood of genomic discoveries since this story was first published, it’s still a good primer on fundamental concepts and everyday challenges for the physician advising a patient. The expert guests include a genetic pathologist, a clinical ge...
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  Ep146: Dealing with the next pandemic 2- lockdowns and human rights 06.04.2026 55min

  While waiting for COVID-19 vaccines to be rolled out, Australian jurisdictions adopted strong social restrictions to minimise community transmission of the virus. It’s estimated that together, these public health measures spared around 50,000 lives up to December 2022 and that vaccines saved three times as many again. While this public health response the pandemic is described as one of the most effective in the world it did cause unintended social harms and lingering resentment. Our leaders ...
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  Ep145: Dealing with the next pandemic 1- border closures and vaccine mandates 30.03.2026 1u 5min

  While waiting for COVID-19 vaccines to be rolled out, Australian jurisdictions adopted strong social restrictions to minimise community transmission of the virus. It’s estimated that together, these public health measures spared around 50,000 lives up to December 2022 and that vaccines saved three times as many again. While this public health response the pandemic is described as one of the most effective in the world it did cause unintended social harms and lingering resentment. Our leaders ...
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  [Case Report] 62yo undergoing procedure for a lung nodule 16.03.2026 24min

  A 62‐year-old man is undergoing a CT‐guided core biopsy of a lung nodule when he develops an iatrogenic pneumothorax. After admission to the Royal Adelaide hospital he has ongoing dyspnoea, oxygen desaturation, and chest pain not helped by a preexisting Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. The treatment for the patient’s symptoms doesn’t immediately go to plan but his care team apply a combination of recent technologies to bring the condition under control. Pomegranate [Case Reports] have b...
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  Ep143: On the ground with MSF 02.03.2026 1u 3min

  Médecins Sans Frontières has projects in more than 70 countries that might be affected by natural disasters, armed conflict or disease outbreaks. Its clinics see over two million emergency room admissions a year and another 16 million outpatient consults. Emergency Paediatrics consultant Josephine Goodyer and ID consultant Tasnim Hasan are two of more than a hundred Australians and New Zealanders who contributed to MSF’s missions last year. Between them they have covered practice settings as ...
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  [Case Report] 75 yo with a porcelain aorta 16.02.2026 30min

  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 presenting with cardiac arrhythmia. A dual chamber ICD was implanted at the time for secondary prevention and other comorbidities were managed. The patient is now being considered for staged alcohol septal ablation (for the HCM) and transcatheter aor...
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  Ep141: Space Medicine Part 2- really remote practice 02.02.2026 41min

  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 an uncomfortable ride back to Earth in the very precisely customised descent module. Microgravity also causes demineralization of weight-bearing bones that is faster than age-related decline. But the cosmonaut had worked out religiously for the en...
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  Ep140: Space Medicine Part 1- radiation and retinopathy 02.02.2026 37min

  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 by then too. This has prompted a renewed interest in the prolonged effects of space travel on the human body, and a lot of fascinating research has been conducted aboard the International Space Station over the last two decades. The main obje...
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  [Case Report] 72yo with anterior uveitis 04.12.2025 29min

  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 a range of medications. Anterior uveitis is identified as the proximal cause of the ocular pain but there are many possible aetiologies that require careful consideration. Pomegranate [Case Reports] have been developed to help Trainees rehearse diagnost...
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  Ep138: Amyloid busters- the benefit and the burden 09.10.2025 56min

  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 modest in Phase III trials to date. After 18 months of therapy they delay progression of disease, as quantified on neurocognitive tests, by around 5 months on average. For some, the prolonged independence and dignity will justify the $60,000...
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  [Case Report] 27yo with left limb weakness and a mediastinal mass 24.09.2025 23min

  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 ischaemic stroke is identified by CT angiogram. His condition deteriorates in hospital, and a mediastinal mass is discovered on review which gives a lead as to the distal cause. This conversation describes the expedient workup and methodical consideration of ...
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  [IMJ On-Air] DKA and insulin infusion protocols 04.09.2025 44min

  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 underlying precipitant. In a survey of practitioners from 31 different hospitals in Australia there was an even split between those organisations which followed a fixed rate insulin infusion protocol, usually based on bodyweight, or a variable rate infusion p...
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  Ep135: “Wherefore a Pomegranate?” and other classics from the last ten years 22.08.2025 32min

  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 but on the crest of the RACP. The journey starts 500 years ago at an unlikely place, the marriage of Henry VIII and the first of his six wives. You’ll find much of the pageantry reproduced at the web page. We then hear from the wonderful staff at...
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  [IMJ On-Air] Microbleeds and Memory 04.08.2025 46min

  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 between cerebral amyloid angiopathy and Alzheimer’s Disease is not understood and even the impact that cerebral microbleeds more generally have on cognition. For the study discussed today, clients of an Australian memory clinic were retrospectively as...