News
Cardiology Innovator Passes
November 13, 2009 5:46 am | CommentsWilliam Ganz, MD, and co-inventor of the Swan-Ganz catheter for measuring blood flow, died Tuesday of natural causes at the age 90 in Los Angeles. “Dr. Ganz was a giant in medicine and in life,” said Prediman Shah, MD, director of the Cardiology Division at the Cedar-Sinai Heart Institute.
Chest Pain Patients Wait Their Turn
November 11, 2009 6:55 am | CommentsEmory University Rollins School of Public Health researchers recently presented a study that examined compliance with recommendations that a physician screen chest pain patients within 10 minutes of their arrival in the Emergency Department. The American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association recommend an electrocardiogram be performed and shown to a physician within 10 minutes of a chest pain patient's arrival to the emergency department.
New Course For Med Schools
November 11, 2009 6:45 am | CommentsWhen Aaron Laviana started medical school at Georgetown University in 2007, he dissected a cadaver in his first week, in anatomy class. Today, classes such as “Physician-Patient Communication” and “Social and Cultural Issues in Health Care” come first. Dissection doesn't begin until month four at Georgetown -- as part of a unit on limbs -- and anatomy class no longer exists.
Plastic Surgeon Eliminating Traditional Methods
November 11, 2009 6:28 am | CommentsDr. Oleh Slupchynskyj, Director of The Aesthetic Institute of New York and New Jersey, recently announced he’ll be using a new rhinoplasty procedure that eliminates traditional packing and the subsequent painful removal. The pain associated with the post-operative removal of nasal packing is a commonly cited fear among rhinoplasty candidates.
Pain Continues After Cancer Surgery
November 11, 2009 6:16 am | CommentsAccording to a study published in the November 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association by Rune Gärtner, MD, and colleagues, pain for two to three years after auxillary lymph node dissection surgery continues to be common. Loretta S. Loftus, MD, MBA, and Christine Laronga, MD, both of the H.
What Health Care Reform Means To Our Taxes
November 10, 2009 6:15 am | CommentsStephen Ohlemacher, AP All of the health care packages are expensive, as the House bill is projected to cost $1.2 trillion over 10 years and the Senate Finance Committee bill is projected to cost $829 billion. But President Barack Obama has pledged that overhauling health care will not add to the growing federal budget deficit.
Actor James Woods Sues Over Brother's Wrongful Death
November 10, 2009 6:03 am | CommentsEric Tucker, AP A hospital did not do enough to care for the brother of James Woods when he went to the emergency room complaining of a sore throat and vomiting in 2006, a lawyer told jurors at the wrongful death lawsuit. Michael Woods died from heart disease at Kent Hospital in Warwick, RI on July 26, 2006, after going into cardiac arrest on a gurney.
Animal Tissue Growth Arouses Hope For Human Surgical Procedures
November 10, 2009 5:44 am | CommentsIn an advance that could one day enable surgeons to reconstruct and restore function to damaged or diseased penile tissue in humans, researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine have used tissue engineering techniques to completely replace penile erectile tissue in animals.
Plasma-In-A-Bag Offers New Sterilization Approach
November 10, 2009 5:33 am | CommentsThe practice of sterilizing medical tools and devices, and the resulting reduction in surgery-related infections, helped revolutionize health care in the 19th century. Through the years, numerous sterilization techniques have been developed, but the old mainstay remains the 130-year-old autoclave.
iPhone App Aids Surgical Prep
November 9, 2009 6:07 am | CommentsDr. Frederic Jacquot, an orthopedic surgeon from France, has developed an innovative iPhone application that can measure spine curvature angles “on the fly”. Just like other spine clinicians, Dr. Jacquot was trained to measure the Cobb angle, kyphosis angle and the sacral slope on spine radiographs.
He Shoots, He Scores, He's Fired
November 9, 2009 5:55 am | CommentsReuters Senior health officials in Alberta, Canada said they had fired an unidentified worker for giving National Hockey League players preferential access to the flu vaccine. The controversy boiled over when it was revealed that players for the Calgary Flames and their families received shots on an exclusive basis one day before the province closed public flu clinics due to a shortage of the vaccine.
Shape Up America! Urges Medical Care For Obese
November 9, 2009 5:43 am | CommentsNational obesity and public health leaders are pressing Congress to address health needs of the morbidly obese November 9, 2009 As the House of Representatives and the Senate debate companion bills to make health care more affordable and accessible, a coalition of obesity and public health experts is urging Congress not to overlook the needs of the more than 15 million Americans who suffer from severe obesity and are at the greatest risk for chronic disease and death.
Healthcare Reform: Where Saturday Night's Vote Puts Us
November 9, 2009 5:33 am | CommentsErica Werner, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, AP Here’s a look at bills currently before Congress. The Democratic-controlled House passed its legislation on a 220-215 vote Saturday night, with nearly unanimous Republican opposition. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid is finalizing legislation merging the work of two committees and making other changes.
Possibility Of E. Coli In School Lunches
November 9, 2009 4:49 am | by Libby Quaid, AP | CommentsThe chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee wants an investigation into the risk of E. coli getting into school lunches. Rep. George Miller, (D-CA) is worried about a recent outbreak that killed at least two people and sickened about two dozen others in 11 states. The E. coli outbreak was linked to ground beef produced by Fairbank Farms of Ashville, NY.
"Old" Bypass Method May Be Better
November 6, 2009 5:48 am | CommentsStephanie Nano, AP It seemed like a great idea — doing bypass surgery while the heart is still beating, sparing patients the complications that can come from going on a heart-lung machine. Now the first big test of this method has produced a surprise: Bypass has fewer problems and is more successful done the old way.
