Current neurology, tested against clinical practice.
Practical Neurology Podcast translates neurology papers, case reports, and editor selections into practical clinical discussion. Its episodes move from headline topics to bedside consequences, with careful attention to uncertainty, risk, diagnosis, and management.
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Practical Neurology Podcast is a clinical neurology show shaped by journal articles, editor conversations, and case-based teaching. It is aimed at the working edge of practice. The episodes are not broad medical infotainment; they are conversations about what neurologists notice, miss, test, treat, and explain. One bonus episode on bone health asks why fracture risk can remain outside neurological attention until a fall forces the issue. The discussion stays practical, weighing osteoporosis guidance, the FRAX assessment tool, Parkinson's disease, mobility, and prevention before an event. Editors' highlight episodes work differently. Phil Smith and Geraint Fuller move through whole journal issues, linking topics such as athletes with cognitive concerns, radiologically isolated syndrome, Dravet syndrome in adults, biosimilars in MS, stenting in IIH, anxiety and depression in epilepsy, stroke rehabilitation, freezing of gait, and cerebral vascular imaging. These conversations are at their best when they pause over uncertainty. Head injury in athletes, for example, is treated as a problem of biology, symptoms, family concern, legal pressure, and communication rather than as a simple answer. Case-report episodes bring a different discipline. Martin Turner guides neurology registrars through presentations where the first explanation may be misleading, including migraine-like recurrence, unintentional weight loss, ptosis, paroxysmal cough, and invasive fungal CNS disease. The show makes space for postmortem findings, missed signs, treatment limits, and the value of examining the whole patient. Editor's Choice conversations add focused interviews on topics such as dementia with Lewy bodies, spontaneous intracranial hypotension, and EEG in encephalopathy and encephalitis. The register is professional but conversational. It assumes medical knowledge, yet often starts from the basic clinical question. What does the test show? What should be asked in clinic? What is safe to prescribe? What should be explained honestly to patients and families? Its strength is the conversion of published neurology into clinical habits. The result is a detailed, current, and practice-minded show for clinicians who want to keep their reasoning awake.
Made for: This show is for neurologists, neurology trainees, specialist nurses, and clinicians who regularly manage neurological patients. It assumes comfort with clinical language and rewards listeners who want practical detail rather than simplified health advice.
What sets it apart: It combines editor overviews, case-report reasoning, and author discussions, so new papers are examined from several clinical angles. The show is unusually strong on uncertainty, diagnostic traps, and the everyday consequences of evidence.
The Practical Neurology Podcast is the essential guide for the everyday life of all neurologists. Just like our journal Practical Neurology, this podcast is useful for everyone who sees neurological patients and who wants to keep up-to-date and safe in managing them. In other words, this is a podcast for jobbing neurologists who plough through the tension headaches and funny turns week in and week out. Subscribe to enjoy deep dives into each journal issue with editors Prof. Philip Smith and Dr. Geraint Fuller, discussions on recent case reports with Prof. Martin Turner, and Editor’s Choice article discussions between authors and Dr. Amy Ross Russell. Practical Neurology - pn.bmj.com - is inc…
Phil Smith and Geraint Fuller spot the questions a journal issue could let you skim past.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A practical discussion of fracture-risk assessment before the fall, with FRAX at the center.
Bone health enters neurological practice when the focus moves from reacting to fractures to noticing risk before a fall. Alastair Coles, Ashley Paul, and Lata Badamudi keep the conversation close to the clinic, using a Southampton-authored Practical Neurology paper with Nick…
Two case reports trace how uncertain presentations can mask serious neurological disease.
Two Practical Neurology case reports give Martin Turner, Ruth Wood and Babak Salamani space to follow diagnostic uncertainty where it matters most: the point at which an apparently contained problem turns out to be invasive disease. The aspergillus case carries the main force.
A practical, clinically grounded discussion of the early clues and varied presentations that can make dementia with Lewy bodies difficult to recognize.
Practical Neurology's Editor's Choice approaches dementia with Lewy bodies through the problem of recognition in everyday practice. Amy Ross-Russell leads a focused discussion with Sarah Fulham and Sean O'Dowd on clues that may surface before diagnosis is settled, from somatic…
A practical editorial discussion of the gaps that shape neurological diagnosis, treatment, and everyday care.
Practical Neurology's February 2026 editors' discussion takes "mind the gap" as a useful frame for clinical neurology, looking at gaps in diagnosis, attention, and day-to-day care.
Morning medical evidence, compressed for practice.
Medical research, translated through patient experience.
Practical Neurology Podcast's bonus international episode examines osteoporosis and fracture risk through a downloadable paper on neurologists' bone-health decisions.
["Phil Smith and Geraint Fuller frame the April 2026 Practical Neurology editor's podcast around radiologically isolated syndrome, contact-sports brain injury, the clock drawing test, adult Dravet syndrome, and fulminant IIH.", "Their longest discussion is Audrey Reynolds, Rory O'Donoghue, and Chris McGuigan's radiologically isolated syndrome guide, which they tie to new MS criteria, the central vein sign, and 20%, 30%, 50% conversion figures.", "The issue also ranges from the Imperial College cohort of about 500 retired elite rugby and football players to Fernanda Gomes and Paolo Bertolucci's clock drawing standardization and Alex Dudley and Norman Delante's adult Dravet piece.", "They close on Ruth Dobson's biosimilar editorial, Susie Mullen's shunting-versus-stenting IIH trial, and a new journal-club segment led by Ema O'Connor, Laura White, Jonathan Cleaver, and Ben Wakeley."]
Martin Turner, a neurologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, joins Ruth Wood of UCL and Babak Salamani of Oxford for two Practical Neurology case reports from Edinburgh and Wessex.
["Practical Neurology's February 2026 Editor's Choice episode treats dementia with Lewy bodies as a diagnosis that is often missed in clinic.", "Amy Ross-Russell, a consultant neurologist in southeast England, hosts Sarah Fulham, an Irish neurology trainee and neurodegenerative clinical fellow at Tala Hospital in Dublin, and Sean O'Dowd, a consultant neurologist at Tala University Hospital in Dublin.", "Sarah and Sean describe the syndrome as cortical alpha-synuclein pathology with preserved episodic memory, attentional and visuospatial decline, cognitive fluctuations, and well-formed visual hallucinations.", "The episode also covers bedside clues and workup choices, including pareidolia, Capgras delusion, clock drawing, DAT scans, MIBG, FDG PET, and alpha-synuclein seed amplification assays."]
Practical Neurology Podcast's February 2026 Editors' Highlights uses "mind the gap" to frame papers on dementia with Lewy bodies, epilepsy mood care, osteoporosis risk, angiographic mimics, and stroke rehabilitation.
Harry Potreshkin explains that new floaters with a swollen optic disc can point toward uveitis rather than optic neuritis, and that posterior inflammation may threaten sight without causing pain.
Martin Turner, Ruth Wood and Babak Salomani examine a 24-year-old man with vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a small brain hemorrhage and widespread right-hemisphere MRI changes.
Robin Howard's October 2025 Practical Neurology article covers neurological effects of drugs of misuse, including opioids, stimulants, and hallucinogens.
Neurologists discuss two case reports from Practical Neurology, starting with a 62-year-old man with ptosis and paroxysmal cough.
This episode discusses new UK guidelines for diagnosing and treating spontaneous intracranial hypotension with the guideline authors.
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Professor James Teo discusses artificial intelligence in neurology, demystifying its applications and implications for clinical practice.
Professor Sanjay Sisodiya discusses the impact of climate change on neurological disorders and the responsibilities of neurologists in addressing this challenge.