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?"
President Bush signed legislation on that extends a popular children's health insurance program after having twice refusing attempts to expand it. The extension of the State Children's Health Insurance Program is expected to provide states with enough money to cover those enrolled through March 2009. Politically, the move was a victory for Bush, although Democrats say it will come back to hurt Republicans at the polls. Two times, Bush vetoed bills that would have broadened coverage to more children.
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.
Lying on the gurney in the emergency room last May, facing an appendectomy, I should have been focused on my well-being. Instead, all I could think was: What is this going to cost? It was not that I was uninsured. But I had pre-operation financial anxiety about the prospect of dealing with my insurance company in regard to surgery that had not even happened yet.