League tables, Nits, Feeling the cold, Language - Surrogate marker

Are league tables listing surgical outcomes the best way to assess your surgeon or are high risk patients being turned away as surgeons keep an eye on their figures? New data published this week list the clinical outcomes for heart surgery - cardiac surgeons are just one speciality from an ever expanding list of doctors whose performance is now published in league tables and subject to public scrutiny. But what impact has their introduction had on patient care? Sam Nashef, a consultant cardiac surgeon at Papworth Hopsital, discusses this issue with Mark Porter. Recent research in schools in Wales suggest that as many as one in 12 primary school children get them at this time of year - and that compares favourably with Australian research, which suggests the figure's much higher - closer to one in five. Resident sceptic Dr Margaret McCartney explains which treatments are supported by evidence. Lyn e-mailed Inside Health to understand why she often feels colder than other people. How, she asked, do we regulate our body temperature and are some people better at it than others? George Havenith is Professor of Environmental Physiology and Ergonomics at Loughborough University, and Mike Tipton, Professor of Human and Applied Physiology at the University of Portsmouth, provide answers. And in the next of our special series demystifying the language of research and statistics Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford and Dr Margaret McCartney unpack the concept of surrogate markers. These feature increasingly in medical research and can involve everything from blood test results, to the pattern on your heart trace or ECG.