Monica Long had expected a routine appointment. But here she was sitting in her new oncologist’s office, and he was delivering deeply disturbing news. Nearly a year earlier, in 2007, a pathologist at a small hospital in Cheboygan, MI, had found the earliest stage of breast cancer from a biopsy. Extensive surgery followed, leaving Ms. Long’s right breast missing a golf-ball-size chunk. Now she was being told the pathologist had made a mistake. Her new doctor was certain she never had the disease, called ductal carcinoma in situ, or D.C.I.S. It had all been unnecessary — the surgery, the radiation, the drugs and, worst of all, the fear.
Computer files from South Shore Hospital that contain personal information for about 800,000 people may have been lost when they were shipped to a contractor to be destroyed, hospital officials announced yesterday. The officials declined to identify the contractor, but said that an independent information security consulting firm has determined that specialized software, hardware, and technical knowledge would be required to open and decipher information in the files. They also said they had no evidence that the information in those files had been improperly used by anyone.
Stun guns have started to show up in hospital settings, a migration that has raised some concerns. On July 8, a security guard used a stun gun on the 25-year-old nephew of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas after he allegedly became combative when trying to leave a Marrero, LA, hospital against doctors' orders, according to the nephew's relatives. Derek Thomas's family said he was subdued with a stun gun. The hospital has cited patient privacy laws in declining to comment. There are 151 hospitals in the United States that use or are testing Taser brand electronic control devices. Each hospital develops its own stun-gun guidelines, but a company spokesperson said, "Hospital security officers on scene are best able . . . to determine the proper response."
More than half a century ago, when antibiotics were transforming modern medicine, a now almost forgotten drug was hailed as something close to the miracle of miracles. Doctors rushed to prescribe it for an array of medical problems — that is, until they discovered that the drug, chloramphenicol, sometimes had lethal side effects. Yet today, improbable as it may seem, an effort is underway to revive the use of chloramphenicol and other antibiotics that had largely been banished because of their potential danger. How can this be? Some scientists say the older antibiotics may be one way to fight sometimes deadly bacteria that have become resistant to modern drugs.
Former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy is seeking release from federal prison on appeal bond in light of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last month that ordered a review of his government corruption convictions and those of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Scrushy asked a federal appeals court to reconsider its January 2008 order denying him appeal bond. Scrushy's attorneys say in the new motion that he is now broke because of $2.8 billion judgment against him in a lawsuit by HealthSouth shareholders and no longer has the means or motivation to flee. Prosecutors had said he was a flight risk.
Jim Meis' survival following a heart attack in March is the story of a community with a rare combination of medical assets: civilians trained in CPR, state-of-the art emergency care and cutting-edge cardiac medicine. But his longer story -- a dozen near-death experiences since he was a young man -- also describes three decades in the evolution of heart disease and cardiac medicine. It also explains why deaths from heart attacks are on the wane in the United States -- while a very different cardiac ailment, chronic heart failure, is a growing epidemic, and the demand for heart transplants is relentless. "We are the victims of our own success," said Meis' cardiologist, Mark Houghland, MD.