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12/27/2005 - BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) -- In a sea of tents and trailers on Balad Air Base in northern Iraq, shrapnel is being surgically removed from a limb, medics are racing to stop someone from bleeding to death and another life is being saved from wounds inflicted on the battlefield. It is that sea of tents which houses the Air Force theater hospital, where servicemembers and civilians get the most advanced medical care possible in a combat zone. Run by the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Group, the hospital offers trauma and specialized medical care for people throughout Iraq and...

In urgent telephone calls and agonized e-mail messages, American scientists are expressing increasing concerns that the world's first partial face transplant, performed in northern France on Nov. 27, may have been undertaken without adequate medical and ethical preparation. Some scientists say they fear that if the French effort fails, it could not only threaten the life of the transplant recipient, a 38-year-old Frenchwoman, but jeopardize years of careful planning for a new leap in transplant surgery. "We've been working on the ethics and the science for some time, going slowly while we figure out immunology and patient selection criteria and...

CASES The thing about surgery - as in the verb form, doing surgery - is that it is so serious. But after surgeons retire, it becomes a noun, a memory, selective. And what surgeons like to remember about their surgical adventures is how funny they could be. Long ago, at 2 a.m., I was helping a resident close an emergency heart valve replacement at the general hospital where we had our cardiac surgical practice. I had missed dinner and was thinking of an early breakfast when my hunger pangs were eliminated by a phone call from the Park Avenue Hospital,...

WASHINGTON, April 6 - In documents made public on Wednesday, health regulators estimated that up to 93 percent of silicone breast implants ruptured within 10 years. The surprisingly high figure will further roil a debate next week about whether to lift the 13-year-old ban on silicone implants for breast enhancement. A committee of plastic surgeons and other experts will convene on Monday to sort through studies of the safety and resilience of silicone implants. The panel is also widely expected to hear emotional testimony from scores of women who have had the implants. The experts are to decide by April...

STANFORD, Calif. - Kathleen Young had no reason to believe she was anything but healthy. She led a hectic life, running a tree-trimming business with her husband, studying to become a nurse and bringing up three daughters, ages 10, 12 and 13, in Raymore, Mo. But in an instant last September, everything changed. While working out at the gym, Mrs. Young, 41, suddenly went blind in her left eye. Minutes later, her head began to pound. The diagnosis, after an M.R.I. and other tests, was almost beyond comprehension: a rare disease had created blockages in arteries deep inside her skull,...

Coalition doctors give Zaleikha a reason to smile Story by 2nd Lt. Christy Kercheval, Combined Joint Task Force 76 Public Affairs BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan—Knowing the skills of the Coalition doctors at Bagram, Zaleikha and her uncle hoped just showing up at the Bagram gate would be enough. The pair traveled from Farah, on the other side of Afghanistan from Bagram, to see if Coalition surgeons could operate on 10-year-old Zaleikha and repair her cleft palate. Once the doctors were made aware of the girl’s needs, they were eager to do what they could for her. Colonel Dallas Homas, a Combined...

The condition for which former President Bill Clinton will undergo elective surgery on Thursday is a complication that occurs in fewer than 1 percent of coronary bypass patients, his doctors said yesterday. The complication, in which fluid and scar tissue compress and collapse a lobe of the left lung, is not expected to recur, the doctors said at a news conference at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. The doctors said they expected that Mr. Clinton "will resume his work without limitations" within a month. Doctors not involved in Mr. Clinton's care agreed that the complication was unusual and did not pose...

His case had been reviewed, the letter said. ``In addition, we have reviewed your personal Web site.'' The American Society of Transplant Surgeons and LifeLink are ``strongly opposed to the solicitation of organs or organ donors by recipients or their agents through Web sites,'' the letter continued. ``After careful deliberation, we will not consider any living donor for you.'' Crionas was stunned by the decision. ``I was dumbfounded ... I'm, like, are you serious?'' The LifeLink letter said he could be put back on the national list to wait for a ``deceased'' kidney of someone who had made provisions to...

When Robert Phillips, a truck driver in Virginia, was dying of kidney failure in 1963, his younger sister, Ruth, read in a newspaper about a mother-to-son kidney transplant in Denver. Ms. Phillips picked up the phone and called the transplant doctors. Could she give one of her kidneys to her brother? she asked them. Blood tests revealed that the siblings' blood types did not match. But the doctors still agreed to bring Mr. Phillips, 37, to Denver for the highly experimental surgery, in the hope they could give him the "two good years" he wished for. Forty-two years later, Mr....

Karimnagar, Andhra Pradesh (India): Surgeons at the local hospital here have removed 90 metal objects, including keys, screw drivers, spanners and nails, after a surgery on a 22-year-old youth. Dr Vamsi Mohan and Dr Sugunakar, who led the team of surgeons, said after the surgery that the youth, Nagaraju was now out of danger. The patient was admitted with symptoms of schizophrenia and was later shifted to the surgical ward when he began to vomit. X-ray revealed the presence of a big metal object in the stomach, they said, but were later surprised to find 90 articles. The patient did...

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) Doctors with Bravo Surgical Company known as the ''Cheaters of Death'' fight their own quiet battles every day against the horrifying wounds of war. ''These injuries we never see at home,'' said one of the surgeons, Dr. Matthew Camuso of Los Angeles. ''I mostly treated gunshot wounds and stabbing, but these injuries don't compare you just don't have people blown up back home.'' Dr. Michael Mazurek, an orthopedic surgeon and trauma specialist from Philadelphia, said he has seen ''some horrific injuries'' in the 90 days since coming to Iraq. ''The tremendous force of the IED can...

Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, shares at least one thing with millions of other American women: she had fibroids, benign tumors in the uterus that required treatment. Ms. Rice, the nominee for secretary of state, entered the hospital for an overnight stay last week to undergo a procedure - uterine artery embolization - that is rapidly becoming an alternative to major surgery for troublesome fibroids. For most women, fibroids, consisting of muscle and fibrous tissue, are no bother. But for millions of others, fibroids can be so large (in some cases, the size of a melon) or so numerous...

CASES It was 5:30 in the morning. I noticed an elderly man being whizzed into the emergency department on a stretcher. What was unusual were his movements. He seemed to occupy a fourth dimension, oscillating in several directions at the same time. The year was 1956, and I was a fledgling intern, working in the emergency room at a hospital in New York, trying to survive the 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. shift. This was my first encounter with a patient who was having continuous convulsions, and I was stunned into inaction. Finally, I was dislocated from my paralysis by...

Five surgeons were discussing who makes the best patients to operate on.The first surgeon said, "I like to see accountants on my operating table because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered."The second responded, "Yeah, but you should see electricians! Everything inside them is color coded."The third surgeon said, "Well, I really think librarians are the best; everything inside them is in alphabetical order."The fourth surgeon chimed in, "You know, I like construction workers. Those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over at the end, and when the job takes longer than you said...

TMC chief of surgery Dr. James Balserak arrived at Camp Sather in Baghdad last week. He's due to return home in mid-November.   Leaving behind a thriving career, a young family and a safe and comfortable life, the chief of surgery at Tucson Medical Center - Dr. James Balserak - has thrown himself smack into harm's way, in the middle of the Iraq war.   Admitting some have called him nuts while others react with awe, he tries to explain why he is now, by choice, in the most dangerous place on the planet for an American.   "I...

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS An obese Massachusetts woman and her 8-month-old fetus died of complications 18 months after the woman had stomach-stapling surgery, an apparent first that is leading to warnings about the risks of pregnancy soon after the surgery. The deaths, in 2002, raise concerns because most of the 110,000 people who have gastric, or stomach, bypass surgery each year in the United States are women in their child-bearing years, say doctors at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who tried to save the woman and fetus. They reported on the case in a letter in Thursday's New England Journal...

MORE than 3,000 militant French surgeons are threatening to down scalpels and cross the English Channel to Britain for a week of symbolic exile next month in protest over rates of pay and high insurance premiums. "We are going abroad because nobody will be able to force us to work when we are there," one surgeon, Philippe Breil, said. French law would oblige them to work if asked to do so by their local authority. The surgeons are planning their protest for the week beginning 30 August and say they will meet up at a conference centre in Wembley. With...

North Florida Surgeons and the medical liability crisis At-a-glance • Not a protest, but our only option: North Florida Surgeons’ decision to close its doors May 2 was not our way of protesting, but the result of crushing economic realities – soaring claims, losses and premiums are threatening our survival. • A high-quality, experienced practice: North Florida Surgeons was formed in 1996 by combining the practices of about 20 established general surgeons with a combined 140 years of surgical experience. We are a good, veteran practice caught up in this crisis. • Filling a community need: In its eight years...

Bronze Age had brain surgeons By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 21/08/2002) A Bronze Age skull discovered on the banks of the Thames may have belonged to one of the first Londoners to have major head surgery, archaeologists said yesterday. The hole in the skull suggests a trepanning operation They were intrigued by an irregular hole in the man's skull, measuring approximately 1.75ins by 1.25in. The lack of fractures around the opening ruled out a blow with a blunt instrument. Instead, the bevelled edge suggested that the man had undergone a primitive operation called trepanation. The skull was found on...

<p>You've seen photographs of the terrorist bombings in Israel. Yesterday, Dr. Michael Stein displayed the X-rays.</p> <p>As trauma director at the Rabin Medical Center outside Tel-Aviv, Stein has developed an intimate, unwanted familiarity with the human toll of the suicide bombings of the last two years. Speaking at a trauma symposium at Allegheny General Hospital, he recounted some of the lessons he and his colleagues have learned in administering to the 3,000 people injured and the 430 who have died in attacks since September 2000.</p>