Johns Hopkins Medicine Health News, July 2007

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

NOTE TO EDITORS/REPORTERS:  Welcome to the July/August 2007 edition of JHM Health News.  Look for our one-year anniversary edition on Tuesday, September 25. 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.

For details of stories in this month’s news, click on the accompanying hyperlink.  Some Internet links may not appear on a single line.  If a hyperlink fails, check for continuation of the address on the next line.

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:

• MEALS THAT SATISFY TRAVELERS’ HUNGER – AND THEIR CONSCIENCE
• HOMING IN ON ONE OF THE MOST MYSTERIOUS CAUSES OF SUDDEN CARDIAC DEATH
• HOPKINS OPENS NEW OUTCOMES RESEARCH CENTER FOR SURGERY
• RESEARCHERS ESTABLISH NEW CENTER FOR RARE, BUT DEADLY FORM OF CANCER
• HOPKINS DOCTOR SEEKS ANSWERS TO A POTENTIALLY DEADLY CONDITION

MEALS THAT SATISFY TRAVELERS’ HUNGER – AND THEIR CONSCIENCE
You’re on vacation. You’re supposed to have fun. And that sometimes includes giving in to the ubiquitous availability of fast food, “junk food,” sweets and various calorie-laden beverages on the road, in airports and at resorts.  Ryan Andrews, a licensed dietitian and exercise physiologist at the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center, offers tips on preventing “vacationer waist.”  One idea: keep a variety of prepared vegetables on hand, such as red or green pepper strips, celery sticks and baby carrots. They are great to use as quick snacks.  For additional information or to interview Andrews, please contact JH Health News at mednews@jhmi.edu

HOMING IN ON ONE OF THE MOST MYSTERIOUS CAUSES OF SUDDEN CARDIAC DEATH
In their quarter-century campaign to accurately diagnose one of the most mysterious causes of sudden cardiac death, scientists are moving closer to the answer with the aid of improved genetic screening.  “In many cases,” says Hopkins cardiologist Hugh Calkins, M.D., “we can now pin it down.”  One of every 5,000 people has arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia (ARVD).  Its presence too often becomes clear only after an autopsy reveals telltale signs of the condition, such as a severely dilated right ventricle whose walls are thinned and replaced with fibro-fatty tissue. While getting an accurate early diagnosis can avert deaths in affected people, the condition’s genetic links also give it a ripple effect: A third of an afflicted person’s children will likely get it.

HOPKINS OPENS NEW OUTCOMES RESEARCH CENTER FOR SURGERY
Whereas measures like laboratory tests have traditionally been used to judge the end results of a health care intervention, outcomes research measures how people function after leaving the hospital and their experiences with care—often the things that matter most to patients. Using national databases, a Hopkins researcher is studying the effect of minimally invasive surgery, as well as transplant and vascular surgery, on outcomes, and is looking at the safety of surgery in the elderly to see if frailty influences surgical outcomes. Currently, there are almost 1,000 patients enrolled.

RESEARCHERS ESTABLISH NEW CENTER FOR RARE, BUT DEADLY FORM OF CANCER
Researchers and clinicians at Johns Hopkins have been teaming up to work on melanoma for years. But know their efforts have been unified into a new Hopkins melanoma program that brings together researchers and clinicians from different disciplines into a comprehensive bench-to-bedside center for treating this rare but deadly form of cancer.

HOPKINS DOCTOR SEEKS ANSWERS TO A POTENTIALLY DEADLY CONDITION
Hopkins gastroenterologist Sanjay Jagannath admits that when it comes to caring for a particular group of patients, he’s frustrated.  “Despite all the people we see with pancreatitis—acute and chronic—we still do not understand what’s really behind this potentially deadly condition. To that end, Jagannath and other Hopkins specialists have launched the Pancreatitis Center to create comprehensive treatment plans and at the same time tease out the disease’s underlying mechanisms.

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

-JHM-