January 1st, 2012 by BarbaraFederOstrov in Health Policy, News
No Comments »
Medical Marijuana: Advocates are pushing forward a California ballot initiative that would create a Board of Medical Marijuana Enforcement to oversee the state’s burgeoning industry, Lisa Leff reports for the Associated Press. We’re imagining the snacks at board meetings.
Health Reform: California Healthline’s Dan Diamond highlights five health reform issuesfor reporters and policymakers to watch closely in 2012. First among them: the Supreme Court review of health reform’s constitutionality.
Medicare: Scammers create intricate webs of Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Reporting on Health - The Reporting on Health Daily Briefing*
December 15th, 2011 by DeborahSchwarzRPA in News
No Comments »
Yoshifumi Naka, MD, PhD
Total Artificial Heart Improves Patient Survival to Transplant While Reducing Some Risks of Transplant Surgery
Surgeons at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center performed the first Total Artificial Heart implant in the New York City area to replace a patient’s dying heart.
“For patients who will die without a heart transplant, the Total Artificial Heart helps them survive until they can get one. By replacing the heart, we are eliminating the symptoms and the source of heart failure,” said lead surgeon Dr. Yoshifumi Naka, director of Cardiac Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Support Programs at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia and associate professor of surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Similar to a heart transplant, the SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Columbia University Department of Surgery Blog*
November 26th, 2011 by DeborahSchwarzRPA in Research
No Comments »
Jeffrey A. Ascherman, MD, FACS
After the jubilation of beating cancer, many women who seek breast reconstruction have another journey to complete. Before they can receive a permanent breast implant, they must first undergo a process to create the space to house the new implant – a process which can be uncomfortable at times and may take many months.
“Traditionally, women undergoing breast reconstruction have had to endure a long process of inconvenient and sometimes uncomfortable saline injections every 2 to 3 weeks to create a pocket for the permanent implant following a mastectomy,” said Jeffrey Ascherman, MD, Site Chief, Division of Plastic Surgery, NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia. According to some women, this process can also involve a significant time burden, since they must visit their doctor’s office every few weeks for an average of four to six months.
Dr. Ascherman is now the first physician in the United States to be enrolling patients in a study of a new, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Columbia University Department of Surgery Blog*
November 21st, 2011 by DeborahSchwarzRPA in Opinion, Research
No Comments »
Robert S. Brown, Jr., MD, MPH
The November 10, 2011 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine features an editorial by Robert S. Brown, Jr., MD, MPH, Director of the Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation, titled Transplantation for Alcoholic Hepatitis — Time to Rethink the 6-Month “Rule.”
In this editorial, Dr. Brown addresses the difficult questions surrounding how to fairly allocate donor organs, which are in far shorter supply than their demand. In the case of patients with alcoholic hepatitis, current guidelines exclude such patients from the liver transplant waiting list unless they have successfully abstained from alcohol for at least six months. Yet as Dr. Brown points out, many die before this required, albeit arbitrary, window elapses. And a new study indicates that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Columbia University Department of Surgery Blog*
October 28th, 2011 by DeborahSchwarzRPA in Research
No Comments »
Lyall A. Gorenstein, MD, FRCS (C), FACS
A recent study funded by the National Institutes of Health found that CT screening reduced deaths from lung cancer by 20%. While it may seem intuitive that screening would help to detect lung cancers and reduce deaths, until now, that had not been definitively proven.
“This is a landmark study,” said Lyall A. Gorenstein, MD, Director of Minimally Invasive Thoracic Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, who lauded the study’s design and its clear implications for treating patients at risk for lung cancer. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, but the merits of screening — whether or not it actually improves patient outcomes – has been a topic of debate for the last 30 years. Dr. Gorenstein believes that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Columbia University Department of Surgery Blog*
