Johns Hopkins Medicine Health News, April 2007

JHM HEALTH NEWS   
An e-news service from Johns Hopkins Medicine
April 2007

NOTE TO EDITORS/REPORTERS:  Welcome to the April 2007 edition of JHM Health News.  This month we offer a new feature: a Q&A format profile of a Johns Hopkins physician, Karen Boyle, M.D., assistant professor of urology and director of Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at the Johns Hopkins Brady Urological Institute.  Boyle specializes in male infertility and sexual health.

As always, Hopkins welcomes comments and suggestions for improving this means of sending you monthly health and medicine story ideas for your direct use or follow up.  Contact John Lazarou at mednews@jhmi.edu to set up interviews, to localize a story with patients in your area, and to arrange for photographs or other services.

Requests to be added to or deleted from the distribution list can also be sent to mednews@jhmi.edu.  To view other news from Johns Hopkins Medicine, go to http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/index.html

IN THIS ISSUE:

• NO ‘SLEEPLESS IN BALTIMORE’
• POWER LAWN MOWER INJURIES CROP UP WITH CHANGE OF SEASON
• MEN: MEET YOUR (FEMALE)UROLOGIST
• ONE WAY TO CURE AN EPIDEMIC
• ONE-TRACK MINDS

NO ‘SLEEPLESS IN BALTIMORE’
When Jill Leukhardt was an executive in a booming technology business a few years back, her bipolar II illness—which she didn’t know she had—dovetailed nicely with her job. “I was one of those determined to have it all,” she says. “I’d work until 2 or 3 a.m. because we needed the output. I loved it. And I’d routinely take the red-eye home from the West Coast to catch my daughter before she went to preschool.”

Seven years ago, however, the disease caught up with her, and Leukhardt became seriously ill, first with depression. She left her job and sought help from both a psychiatrist and a Hopkins-trained psychologist skilled in psychotherapy.

POWER LAWN MOWER INJURIES CROP UP WITH CHANGE OF SEASON
Spring is here, the sky is blue, the grass is green and it’s time to give that lawn a trim. But beware: Lawn mower injuries are a seasonal threat to children and the leading cause of amputations in adolescents, say specialists from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, Maryland’s designated pediatric trauma center where the most severe injuries are treated.

MEN: MEET YOUR UROLOGIST
A  Johns Hopkins-trained physician talks about what sparked her interest in medicine and a surgical specialty, urology, usually the preserve of men.  Boyle, a member of the American Urological Association, the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology and the Society for the Study of Male Reproduction is board certified.  Only 1 percent of board certified urologists in the country are women.

ONE WAY TO CURE AN EPIDEMIC
In September 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines recommending testing for HIV for all patients ages 13 to 64 during routine physical exams or hospital visits. Previously, federal guidelines had recommended testing only those at risk.  To be sure, the guidelines represented a major shift in policy, but in The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s emergency department, they seemed more like business as usual. That’s because the ED has been offering free, rapid HIV testing to everyone who wants it since early 2006, and it was the first in the nation to do so.

ONE-TRACK MINDS
Americans’ love affair with auto racing draws millions to speedways every year. And if you happen to live in Indianapolis, the hype is inescapable. That’s just fine with Indy resident Jim Hall, who passed on his obsession to son Brian. Every May at the Indy 500, they’d join the hordes to cheer on drivers like Eddie Cheever Jr. and Sam Hornish Jr.

But in December 2002, the tables turned and Cheever, Hornish and other racers were doing the cheering this time, rooting at a local hospice for loyal fan Brian Hall, who, at 38, was engaged in his own race against ALS.

For previous issues of JHM Health News go to
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/mediaII/MNU/index.html

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