Faculty Bibliography

For the first time, surgeons have implanted a fully portable mechanical device to help a patient's failing heart pump until a heart donor can be found. The operation was an important step toward the development of a totally implantable artificial heart, researchers said

With the new device, the patient's failing heart remains in place. Doctors hope the patient will be freely mobile after he recovers from the surgery. Unlike previous recipients of artificial heart devices, he will not be tethered to a cumbersome external console. The device is not a full artificial heart like the Jarvik-7, which was powered by an external air compressor

With the new device, the patient's failing heart remains in place. After the patient recovers from the surgery, doctors hope he will be freely mobile. Unlike previous recipients of artificial heart devices, he will not be tethered to a cumbersome external console. The device is not a full artificial heart like the Jarvik-7, which was powered by an external air compressor. The new device is similar to the air-driven left ventricular-assist device made by Thermo Cardiosystems. In the new device, a battery-driven electric motor has replaced the air drive. ''Instead of being tied to a console, the patient is tied to a little battery around the belt,' [Victor Poirier] said. The new device consists of a tube from the left ventricle to a pump in the abdomen just below the diaphragm, the thin muscle that separates the abdomen and the chest cavity. The pump, 4 inches in diameter and 1 1/4 inches thick, sends blood into the aorta, the main artery of the body

In a bizarre twist, President Bush's doctors said his hyperactive thyroid was found to be caused by the same noncontagious thyroid condition for which his wife, Barbara, is being treated. The condition is Graves' disease, an affliction in which the immune system inexplicably attacks the gland in the neck

President Bush began a series of tests on May 8, 1991 to determine how to treat an overactive thyroid that his doctors say led to the erratic heart rhythm that put him in the hospital May 4

The thyroid, a gland under the Adam's apple, secretes a hormone whose main function is to help regulate the body's metabolism or use of energy. An overactive thyroid, or hyperthyroidism, like President Bush has, makes many body functions speed up. Symptoms of an overactive thyroid are discussed

Textbooks vary in style. Some are written by one expert who offers personal recommendations. Others are collections of chapters written by dozens of authors who are expected to thoroughly review the published data. New editions appear periodically, but often the wording in texts changes little over time. After reviewing the major textbooks published since 1956 for the new study, Dr. [Thomas C. Chalmers] said he found that textbook recommendations too often were simple tallies of groups of studies that found conflicting evidence about a therapy's value, rather than critiques based on more sophisticated statistical analyses. Because of the period between editions of most texts, many medical leaders emphasize keeping up with reviews of therapies in journals. 'But the journal reviews are just as out of date as the texts,' Dr. Chalmers said in an interview, explaining that 'the journal review articles are often written by the same people who write the chapters in textbooks.' Dr. Chalmers envisions a system that will monitor all newly reported studies so that doctors can be advised when a meta-analysis shows a significant change in standard therapy. Computer diskettes with the meta-analyses would be periodically distributed to leading journals and publishers of textbooks, Dr. Chalmers said. He said he hoped authors would check the latest statistical data, thus 'bringing about a big change' in the advice given American doctors

Beta-agonist drugs are a mainstay in the treatment of asthma. But an important unresolved question is whether beta-agonists should be used to prevent asthma attacks or only when symptoms flare. Another unresolved question is whether regular use of them makes asthma worse

Recent proposals for mandatory testing of doctors or hospital patients for the AIDS virus have raised questions of civil rights and of the very nature of the patient-doctor relationship. The proposals raise difficult issues of efficacy, privacy, necessity and fairness

RECENT proposals for mandatory testing of doctors or hospital patients for the AIDS virus have raised questions of civil rights and of the very nature of the patient-doctor relationship. While medical groups are increasingly on record as urging physicians to notify their patients if the doctors have become infected with the HIV virus, proposals for mandatory testing raise difficult issues of efficacy, privacy, necessity and fairness. Last week, New York's highest court upheld the state's strict privacy protections for HIV-infected individuals and rejected arguments from New York's leading medical society and others seeking mandatory testing and reporting of the infection. The Court of Appeal decision rejected an effort by the Medical Society of the State of New York to compel the Health Commissioner to declare AIDS a sexually transmissible disease. Such a step would allow doctors to test patients for evidence of HIV infection and require reporting such cases to a health department. In the New Jersey case, Judge [Philip S. Carchman] noted that records at the Medical Center at Princeton were available to any hospital worker, thus potentially breaching the confidentiality of an HIV-infected patient, a physician on its staff who has since died of AIDS. Even proponents of mandatory HIV testing recognize that there are many questions