Faculty Bibliography

They used the word ''peritonitis'' -- the name of a potentially fatal inflammation of the abdominal lining -- only after being pressed repeatedly by reporters. They also described abscesses but declined to use that word, and declined to say how high a fever Mr. [George E. Pataki] had. And although they said that his bowel function was impaired but improving, they would not elaborate despite repeated questioning. Dr. Dennis L. Fowler said yesterday that the adhesions were new and probably caused by the ruptured appendix and the first operation. Dr. [Spencer E. Amory] said that after examining Mr. Pataki and reviewing his records, ''I thought the governor received excellent care at Hudson Valley.'' When asked whether Mr. Pataki had peritonitis, Dr. Amory said there was ''a spread of infection within the abdomen.'' He was asked again, and gave a similar answer. When asked a third time, he said the condition he described ''is defined as peritonitis.''

When Ariel Sharon suffered his first stroke in December, he did what many national leaders who suddenly become ill rarely do. Mr. Sharon, the prime minister of Israel, told his doctors at the Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem to inform the public about his medical problems, Dr. Shlomo Mor-Yosef, the Hadassah Medical Organization's director-general, said in interviews in the United States last week. Critics contend that Mr. Sharon's doctors erred in some of their decisions, including the heparin. But, Dr. Mor-Yosef said, the hospital has conducted internal reviews of Mr. Sharon's treatment at different stages. Hadassah doctors discussed the case by telephone and e-mail with specialists in Israel and elsewhere, he said. An expert in coma, Dr. Jerome B. Posner of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center flew from Manhattan to examine Mr. Sharon. The morning after Mr. Sharon's second stroke, Dr. Mor-Yosef's wife, Dina, and government officials called him because of rumors that the prime minister was dead. Dr. Mor-Yosef swiftly told reporters that Mr. Sharon was alive and in an intensive care unit, and he promised to report quickly any changes in his medical condition

The researchers, who reported their finding at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in San Francisco, do not know whether the virus causes prostate cancer, infection or any other ailment in humans. The virus, called XMRV, could prove to be harmless. The XMRV virus is closely related to a group of retroviruses found in mice and known as xenotropic murine leukemia virus. (Xenotropic means the virus crossed species.) Though such viruses can cause disease in animals other than mice, there has been no documented human infection until the new report. The XMRV virus acts differently from viruses known to cause cancers, [Don Ganem] said. In known links, the virus is in the cancer cell, not in the stroma, and every cell in the tumor is infected

Both men were hospitalized after complaining of pain. Governor [George E. Pataki] had his appendix removed on Feb. 16, developed intestinal complications, and was transferred to another hospital for more surgery. Governor Fletcher had a gallstone removed, then his gall bladder, and later developed an infection in his abdomen and bloodstream. David M. Catalfamo, the communications director for Governor Pataki, said the administration has been trying to strike the right balance between informing the public of important developments about the governor's health while preserving some of his privacy. He said that the written statements his office has issued over the last few days have updated the public on the salient points about the governor's health. But some other doctors not connected with the case have said that the statements were sparse in detail. Since then, the administration has relied on the written statements to discuss his condition. But the absence of specific detail led many news outlets to call doctors who are not involved in Governor Pataki's care and invite them to speculate about the causes of his intestinal complications. After The Daily News quoted a doctor who raised the possibility that the governor's digestive system had been blocked by surgical error, Mr. Catalfamo issued a statement which said that the blockage ''was not a result of surgical error.''

The man who contracted inhalation anthrax, Vado Diomande, a drummer and dancer, collapsed after a performance in Pennsylvania and was hospitalized there last Thursday. On Tuesday, after blood tests confirmed the presence of anthrax, Pennsylvania authorities alerted New York City officials. Yesterday morning, federal authorities concluded definitively that Mr. Diomande had inhalation anthrax. Officials in Pennsylvania also took steps last night to reassure students and employees at the school, Mansfield University in Mansfield, Pa., where Mr. Diomande performed before he collapsed. Mr. Diomande, who is conscious and cooperating with investigators, remained in fair condition last night in the intensive-care unit at Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pa. After Vado Diomande was hospitalized in Pennsylvania with anthrax, an investigation led officials yesterday to a Brooklyn warehouse and the man's van nearby. (Photo by Robert Stolarik for The New York Times); (Photo by Kotchegna Dance Company via Getty Images)(pg. B1); Police yesterday entered the apartment of Vado Diomande at 31 Downing Street in the West Village, after he was found to have anthrax. (Photo by Robert Caplin for The New York Times); From left: Health Commissioner [Thomas R. Frieden]; [Mark J. Mershon] of the F.B.I.; Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly; Joseph F. Bruno, emergency management chief; and Mayor [Michael R. Bloomberg]. (Photo by Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)(pg. B5)

The governor's doctors have not addressed reporters since Mr. [George E. Pataki] left the first hospital, Hudson Valley Hospital Center in Cortlandt Manor. In his statement, Mr. [David M. Catalfamo] said that the surgery to ease the governor's digestive system had gone as expected, and that the governor was awake and able to work on his laptop and walk around. John F. Kilcooley, who was visiting his brother-in-law at the hospital, said he had bumped into Governor Pataki and his wife, Libby, as they walked through the halls of the McKeen Pavilion at the NewYork-Presbyterian hospital yesterday. He said that Mr. Pataki, clad in pajamas and a robe, looked well, and that he was wheeling an intravenous unit with him as he walked. Mr. Pataki is also at risk for developing other complications, like infections and abscesses. Mr. Pataki's doctors would be expected to do additional tests, including imaging procedures like CT scans, at the first sign of a fever or increased white blood count or pain, Dr. [Ralph S. Greco] said

Mr. [George E. Pataki] was transferred to the Manhattan hospital yesterday morning from Hudson Valley Hospital Center in Cortlandt Manor in Westchester County, where he underwent the emergency appendectomy. Doctors there said that after the appendectomy, Mr. Pataki experienced an ileus, which means that for some reason the bowel stopped functioning normally, producing a blockage. ''It is not routine to go back and relieve an obstruction this early in the postoperative course'' after appendicitis, even a perforated appendix, Dr. [Matthew M. Hutter] said in a telephone interview. But, Dr. Hutter said, the need for such an operation would depend on what Mr. Pataki's surgeons found when they performed the appendectomy and what CT scans and other imaging tests might have shown since then. Mr. [David Catalfamo]'s statement did not say what caused Mr. Pataki's bowel obstruction. So his statement did not necessarily rule out the possibility that Mr. Pataki, who is 60, had an additional medical problem causing the obstruction

The lethal A(H5N1) bird flu virus has been detected in wild birds in Italy and Greece, European officials announced yesterday, the first time its presence has been detected in the European Union. It was also detected in Bulgaria. Only about 160 people have become infected with the disease, mostly through close contact with sick birds, and about half of them have died. In Italy, police officers near Messina, in Sicily, found two dead swans on Thursday and performed rapid screening tests on them in the wild, which suggested that the swans had a flu virus, according to ANSA, the official Italian news agency. Such simple tests are not specific enough to indicate a particular virus or strain, like A(H5N1). The variant strain of the A(H5N1) flu found in Turkey and confirmed in Africa last week is identical to one found last year in dead migratory birds in a nature reserve in northern China, and later in Siberia. It is different from strains circulating among poultry in Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Two species of ducks, the northern pintail and the garganey, migrate in a southwesterly direction each fall from Siberia to Turkey and the Black Sea coast, and in some cases to central Africa, according to a recent article in New Scientist. Other species that share the same African wetlands migrate north in the spring, which raises the threat that the disease will be spread more widely around Western Europe later this year

On Dec. 6, 1967, three days after Dr. [Christiaan N. Barnard] gave Louis Washkansky a new heart, Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz, who had relied on Dr. Shumway's technique while experimenting on dogs, performed a heart transplant on an infant at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. The infant died six and a half hours later, and Dr. Kantrowitz declared the operation a failure. On Jan. 2, 1968, Dr. Barnard carried out his second heart transplant on Dr. Philip Blaiberg, who lived 19 months. Mr. Washkansky survived 18 days. In the late 1960's, Dr. John Hauser, the coroner of Santa Clara County, Calif., which included Stanford, sought criminal charges against Dr. Shumway for transplanting organs without an autopsy on the donor, an act that would have made transplantation impossible. The two men shouted at each other over the issue in Dr. Shumway's office, recalled Dr. Eugene Dong, then a transplant surgeon at Stanford and now a lawyer. Dr. Shumway's group began to test the drug independently after a member of the Cambridge team gave a lecture about its findings at Stanford and achieved good long-term results in dogs. ''The animal experiments kept us going while everyone else, who did not have that experimental background, dropped out,'' Dr. Shumway said

The turnaround owes largely to what Shumway called his 'radical perseverance.' He rescued heart transplants with a new immunosuppressant drug, cyclosporin, that helped keep the body from rejecting its new organ, and with a heart biopsy technique to detect and treat rejection before it became lethal. Shumway reshaped the way chest surgeons learn their craft, and he trained many who now perform heart transplants. The transplant revolution he helped set in motion extended far beyond medicine, upsetting the traditional definition of death as the moment the heart stops beating. Instead, an organ donor can now be considered dead as soon as electrical activity of the brain has ceased, allowing transplantation of a living heart or other organ. For a decade starting in 1958, and supported by federal grants from the National Institutes of Health, Shumway experimented on dogs to create what is now the standard technique to remove a patient's heart and replace it with a stranger's. By the time Shumway performed his first human heart transplant on Jan. 6, 1968, it was the world's fourth. But those early transplants seldom achieved long-term success. It was easy enough to transplant a heart, as Shumway once said, 'but it's what happens later with regard to the containment of rejection that makes the real difference.'