Red Whale Primary Care Pod

Don’t miss it, don’t harm them: brain tumour clues, and considering cancer and frailty

Red Whale Season 4 Episode 9

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 45:23

Send us Fan Mail

Headache in the consultation room is common; a brain tumour is (thankfully) not — and that’s exactly why we’re so prone to worry and to miss the subtle clues. In this episode, Nik and Fi cut through the noise on headaches, red flags and brain tumours. They explore how no single symptom reliably hits the NICE “refer” threshold, what to do with “headache +” and “cognitive +”, when to push for urgent imaging/referral, and how to safety net adults and children. Then they move on to a quietly game-changing topic: cancer and frailty — how to spot it, why it alters investigation and treatment risk, what to include in suspected cancer referrals, and practical steps that primary care clinicians can start today to reduce harm and improve outcomes.

Useful Links

Prehabilitation resources for healthcare professionals | Macmillan Cancer Support

Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool: MUST 

Macmillan Cancer Support - healthy eating and cancer

GP Trainee Essentials support package information, and the Red Whale Calendar

Send us your feedback podcast@redwhale.co.uk or send a voice message

Sign up to receive Pearls here. Pearls are available for 3 months from publish date. After this, you can get access them plus 100s more articles when you buy a one-day online course from Red Whale OR sign up to Red Whale Unlimited.  Find out more here.

Follow us:  Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn

Disclaimer: We make every effort to ensure the information in this podcast is accurate and correct at the date of publication, but it is of necessity of a brief and general nature, and this should not replace your own good clinical judgement, or be regarded as a substitute for taking professional advice in appropriate circumstances. In particular, check drug doses, side-effects and interactions with the British National Formulary. Save insofar as any such liability cannot be excluded at law, we do not accept any liability for loss of any type caused by reliance on the information in this podcast.