Faculty Bibliography

E. Patchen Dellinger, vice chairman of surgery at the University of Washington, which took part in the WHO research, said that when the checklist is discussed with nonmedical people, 'the most common reaction is the question: 'You mean you haven't been doing this all along?'' Using surgical data from more than one-fourth of the organization's 192 member states, [Atul Gawande]'s team estimated that 234 million major surgical procedures were undertaken each year worldwide. Of the total, 172 million, or 74 percent, are in the wealthier countries and 40 million of those are in the United States. The number of surgical procedures performed in a year is nearly double the number of births 'and is probably an order of magnitude more dangerous,' Gawande's team reported in an article in the journal Lancet, which was released Tuesday

Dr. E. Patchen Dellinger, vice chairman of surgery at the University of Washington, which took part in the WHO research, said that when the checklist is discussed with nonmedical people, 'the most common reaction is the question: 'You mean you haven't been doing this all along?'' The number of surgical procedures performed in a year is nearly double the number of births 'and is probably an order of magnitude more dangerous,' [Atul Gawande]'s team reported in an article in the journal Lancet, which was released Tuesday. Creating an accurate, functional checklist for surgery took many revisions, Gawande said, adding: 'You can make bad checklists, and you can make good checklists. It is very easy to make a bad checklist that people want to throw away and never use.'

Kevin DeCock, director of the HIV department of the World Health Organization, a UN agency, said that health workers might accept the modest risk of becoming infected with HIV through needles and blood. But, he added, 'it is quite another thing if you are at risk by sharing air with patients with HIV' who have tuberculosis that is resistant to standard and second-line drugs. That, he said, 'has the potential to change how health care workers look at the issue of AIDS care.' At least 700,000 tuberculosis cases develop among HIV-infected people each year, and an estimated 230,000 HIV-infected people will die this year from tuberculosis. The number includes many who received standard antiretroviral drugs that can keep HIV in check but who failed to receive drugs that can usually cure nonresistant tuberculosis, said Mario Raviglione, director of tuberculosis control for the WHO

Dr. Kevin DeCock, director of the HIV department of the World Health Organization, a UN agency, said that health workers might accept the modest risk of becoming infected with HIV through needles and blood. But, he added, 'it is quite another thing if you are at risk by sharing air with patients with HIV' who have tuberculosis that is resistant to standard and second-line drugs. That, he said, 'has the potential to change how health care workers look at the issue of AIDS care.' At least 700,000 tuberculosis cases develop among HIV-infected people each year, and an estimated 230,000 HIV-infected people will die this year from tuberculosis. The number includes many who received standard antiretroviral drugs that can keep HIV in check but who failed to receive drugs that can usually cure nonresistant tuberculosis, said Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of tuberculosis control for the WHO. A particular problem is that in 2006, only 12 percent of reported tuberculosis cases worldwide were also tested for HIV; in Africa, the percentage was 22. But Raviglione noted signs of progress. He said that the percentage of tuberculosis patients tested for HIV in Kenya rose to 70 in 2007 from 19 in 2004 and in Malawi to 83 from 25 in 2004. In Rwanda, the percentage rose to 89 from zero

Tuberculosis and AIDS are now epidemic in many areas of the world, and the two infectious diseases must be addressed together, said the officials, who spoke from the United Nations' first high-level meeting on the interaction of the two diseases

BOSTON - A number of studies showing that circumcision among men reduces their risk of infection from the AIDS virus has raised the hope that the procedure would also benefit their female sexual partners. The study - conducted by the same team of researchers from Johns Hopkins and Uganda who had shown circumcision's benefits among men in earlier studies - is believed to be the first clinical trial to provide scientific data on the effects on women of circumcision in their male partners.

The undated letter was released less than a week after Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, released his medical records

'At the present time, Senator [McCain] enjoys excellent health and displays extraordinary energy,' McCain's primary care physician, Dr. John Eckstein, said Friday in a conference call arranged by McCain's campaign

The media organizations in the pool included ABC News, The Arizona Republic, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, NBC News, Reuters and The Washington Post