StoneAngels » Health & Medicine

Study: Better Treatment Likely The Cause for Decline in Heart Attack Deaths

admin — Mon, 07 May 2007 04:59:02 +0000

In a six year study lead by Dr. Keith Fox, a cardiology professor at the University of Edinburgh, researchers found that deaths from heart attacks have fallen sharply. The trends parallel the growing use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, blood thinners, and angioplasty, the procedure that opens clogged arteries.
The study looked at almost 45,000 patients who had major heart attacks or partial artery blockages. It found

The percentage of patients who died in the hospital or who developed heart failure was nearly cut in half from 1999 to 2005.

And the heart attack patients treated most recently were far less likely to have another attack within six months of being hospitalized when compared to the patients treated six years earlier – a sign that the more aggressive efforts of doctors in the last few years are working.

Not Brain Dead But Still An Organ Donor

admin — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 04:23:35 +0000

Before 1968, lack of heartbeat and breath were considered the defining signs of death. In 1968, a new kind of death criteria was introduced, “brain death.” As medicine advanced, so did ways of keeping people alive on respirators and feeding tubes, even if the brain no longer functioned. Throughout the 1970s, the science and legal communities came to define brain death as a complete absence of brain stem reflexes, no evidence of breathing on one’s own, and no sign of consciousness.
A recent article in NewScientist delves into new ethical issues surrounding brain death as it relates to organ donation. Right now, the world’s organ supply is dwindling. Up until now, the vast majority of organs are taken from patients with brain injuries so severe that they are declared brain dead before their bodies are taken off life support. Now, some places are looking to other means to obtain organs.

In most places, if a patient is on life support in an intensive care unit and a doctor recommends switching off the life support, they’d have to wait until the patient’s heart stopped beating, brain activity ceased, and for a doctor to officially declare her “brain-dead.” By that time, her organs would be too damaged to be usable.

In June, Ottawa Hospital in Canada announced its first organ transplant in recent history from a patient who hadn’t been classified as brain-dead, but whose heart had stopped – so-called “donation after cardiac death” (DCD). By switching to this definition of death for transplant purposes, doctors hope to increase the number of healthy organs available and the number of potential donors from which they can be harvested.

If the US adopted the definition, it would increase the supply of organs by up to 20%. But whenever science starts proposing modifications to established norms, it sparks intense debates. In this case, the biggest question is whether doctors will end up sacrificing patient care to save another patient on the organ donor waiting list. Will doctors be more likely to jump the gun and declare someone hopeless when they might have the potential to recover at some point in the future?

And what about the organ donors, themselves, who are clueless about such possibilities? Australia, for instance, is considering having a separate check box on the organ donor form to specifically allow people to consent to one or both forms of organ donation.

Still, the US tends to be more conservative about such matters, so I’m guessing that when the mainstream media picks up this debate, it’s likely to spark all sorts of controversy here.

Biomedical Supply House Owners Charged with Selling Body Parts For Transplants

admin — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:03:06 +0000

Earlier this year, a biomedical supply house and three others were charged with selling body parts to the tune of millions of dollars. They’d obtain bodies from funeral parlors in New York City, Rochester, Philadelphia and New Jersey and then forge death certificates and organ donor consent forms to sell the organs. Prosecutors said that many of the bodies were too old or sickly to be good candidates for donation so the defendants forged their death certificates to make them seem younger and healthier.

Nicelli was paid up to $1,000 per body to deliver corpses to a secret operating room at his funeral parlor, where Mastromarino would remove body parts, authorities said. Crucetta, a nurse, and Aldorasi allegedly helped Mastromarino.

Mastromarino made up to $7,000 a body by selling the tissue, authorities said, and the corpses were then returned to unsuspecting funeral directors for burial.

This is the kind of stuff you read about in the 1800s – so it’s terrifying to see that it’s happening now.

Source: LiveScience

Death and Dying: The Widower Effect

admin — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 19:36:32 +0000

A new study by Harvard Medical School and the University of Pennsylvania reports that people who have lost a spouse within the last 30 days are significantly more likely to die. The study followed more than 518,000 couples older than 65. It found that:

The death of a wife in the previous 30 days increased a husband’s risk of death by 53 percent, and the death of a husband increased a wife’s risk of death by 61 percent. Additionally, the hospitalization of one partner elevated health risks for the other partner for nearly two years.

Source: Scientific American Mind, April/May 2006 (Subscription required)