JHM HEALTH NEWS
An e-news service from Johns Hopkins Medicine
November 2007
NOTE TO EDITORS/REPORTERS: Welcome to the Nov. 2007 edition of JHM Health News. 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.
IN THIS ISSUE:
- A CRUCIAL SAVE HELPS BYPASS AMPUTATION
- MOVING THE MICU
- COMMON SYMPTOMS, RARE DISORDER
- FOR STROKE, THREE SPECIALIZED SERVICES
- SIMULATING SAFETY
- AGING HEART CHANGES SHAPE, SHRINKS AND LOSES PUMPING FUNCTION TOO
A CRUCIAL SAVE HELPS BYPASS AMPUTATION
Joe Taschner , a 55-year-old father of two from Northampton, Pa., had already undergone numerous surgeries because of his lifelong struggle with diabetes—including a kidney transplant and cataract surgery on both eyes in Pennsylvania, as well as a triple heart bypass performed at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2002. When he began having problems with circulation in his legs last spring, Taschner scheduled an appointment to see Thomas Reifsnyder, head of vascular surgery at Johns Hopkins, about a possible bypass surgery in his leg. But before he made it to Baltimore, two of the toes on his right foot started turning black.
MOVING THE MICU
The hospital’s sickest patients are benefiting from less sedation and more physical rehabilitation therapy. For years, Roy Brower had heard about the unusual goings-on in the intensive care unit at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. There, patients didn’t lie in bed day and night under heavy sedation; they were up and walking the halls with ventilators, an idea so at odds with routine ICU practice that some consider it impossible.
COMMON SYMPTOMS, RARE DISORDER
With hydrocephalus, the devil is in the diagnosis—and in selecting candidates for a shunt. An energetic octogenarian in Philadelphia returned to college to earn the degree that had eluded her earlier in life. Soon, though, the woman started having problems with balance and resorted to walking with a cane. Mild dementia made it impossible to keep up in class.
FOR STROKE, THREE SPECIALIZED SERVICES
The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center may each have a stroke center, but the two operate as one—one exceptionally large, fully integrated cerebrovascular program. Faculty and residents rotate between two stroke clinics and two neuro intensive care units. There’s even a “stroke attending” on call 24/7.
SIMULATING SAFETY
Sophisticated mannequins can help teams prevent future harm to patients.
For years, hospitals have used simulation technology to hone clinicians’ skills for such scenarios as respiratory and cardiac arrests, difficult intubations and births. At Hopkins, teams are also bringing in the same sophisticated mannequins to prepare for complications that may arise when new treatment technologies and methods are adopted.
AGING HEART CHANGES SHAPE, SHRINKS AND LOSES PUMPING FUNCTION TOO
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have evidence to explain why the supposedly natural act of aging is by itself a very potent risk factor for life-threatening heart failure. In a study presented during the recent American Heart Association’s (AHA) annual meeting, the Hopkins team analyzed more than a half-dozen measurements of heart structure and pumping function to assess minute changes in the hearts of 5,004 men and women, age 45 to 84, of different ethnic backgrounds and with no existing symptoms of heart disease.
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