In a place where doctors are delivering some of the world's most advanced medicine, art plays an important role in the healing process. At Children's Hospital in Washington, DC, art therapists involve kids in everything from puppet shows to dance, to exhibits of the works they create.
Children and teens diagnosed with type 2 diabetes are five times more likely to develop kidney disease later in life than those who develop diabetes as adults, a recent study found. The findings underscore the importance of preventing the onset of type 2 diabetes, doctors say.
Three female neurosurgeons who currently or formerly worked at Brigham and Women's Hospital have filed discrimination complaints against the new chairman of the department, Arthur Day, MD. Sagun Tuli, MD, a spine neurosurgeon at the hospital since 2000, filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination last month and a gender, color, and national origin discrimination lawsuit in federal court this month, asserting that Day asked her at a hospital dinner in 2004 if she would "get up on the table and dance for us to show the female residents how to behave?"
Plastic surgery has become mainstream--almost 11 million procedures were performed in the U.S. in 2006, up 7 percent from the previous year. The vast majority were performed on women, with breast augmentation and nose reshaping leading in popularity. Doctors say that anxiety about the response is common among patients and that they can expect comments that are not of the you-look-fabulous variety.
Two new services, Sound Cancer Connections based at Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, and a new holistic cancer support group forming at Capital Medical Center on Olympia's west side--are setting up networks of integrative medicine practitioners who want to help ease the way for cancer patients.
The proposed sale of two Exempla Healthcare hospitals--Lutheran and Good Samaritan--won approval from state Attorney General John Suthers despite a conflict over services banned by the Catholic Church. The opinion sparked an outcry from community organizations opposing the loss of services such as abortions, forms of sterilization including tubal ligation and vasectomies, and emergency contraception pills.