Faculty Bibliography

The immediate problem is to determine whether Mr. [William J. Casey] lost any ability to speak or think as a result of surgery. Generally, it takes several days to determine how well any patient, particularly one in his 70's who has undergone general anesthesia for brain surgery, responds. The lymphoma could have damaged Mr. Casey's intellectual capacities in the last few months, or even years, but it is also entirely possible that he could have escaped any intellectual impairment. Patient's Ability to Function Doctors not connected with the case said the type of lymphoma was probably what doctors call a primary tumor of the brain, meaning it started there. In most cases this does not spread elsewhere. Dr. Nicholas T. Zervas, chief of neurosurgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said that when the lymphoma ''is first found in the brain it is usually confined.'' Dr. William R. Shapiro, professor of neurology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center who is head of the National Brain Tumor Cooperative Group sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, said, ''This is an unusual disease, but it is being seen more frequently.'' He said that though the usual treatment was radiation, some experts were beginning to administer chemotherapy in advance of radiation in experimental studies. Puzzle About Diagnoses

The significance of the Zairian-French experiments is as much in their timing as their potential. News of the experiments has astonished other AIDS experts who had believed that the first human experiments of any form of immunization would not come for at least a year. The hope of the Zairian-French experiments is that the body's augmented supply of killer lymphocytes will prevent the AIDS virus from developing into acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Because AIDS paralyses the immune system, victims fall prey to a wide variety of so-called opportunistic infections. Dr. Jonathan Mann, the head of the World Health Organization's AIDS program, said this week that because of reports that were circulating among AIDS researchers about the Zairian-French experiments, he had asked the government of Zaire for details. But he said he had not yet received a reply

''No further urological examinations or other medical procedures are planned,'' Dr. [T. Burton Smith], said at the time. Dr. Smith, a urologist, announced his resignation as White House physician on Dec. 4 after serving in that position since Jan. 3, 1985. He resigned to pursue ''personal interests elsewhere,'' said Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman. Some Are Puzzled by Resignation In an interview about Mr. [Reagan]'s health in 1980, Dr. Smith said that he had done the operation to correct an abnormality of a portion of Mr. Reagan's urinary bladder called the ''neck'' and to remove about 30 ''seedlike prostatic stones.'' The operation was done because Mr. Reagan had suffered a series of urinary tract infections. ''Some of the very large glands are not very obstructive,'' Dr. Stuart E. Price, the president of the American Urological Association, said. Dr. Price, who practices urology in Pittsburgh and who is not involved in Mr. Reagan's case, went on: ''Conversely, some of the rather small glands are very obstructive. Some glands can enlarge to 300 grams without causing significant problem. But by the same token we have seen less than 15 gram prostates that are significantly obstructing because they encroached on'' the urethra to a greater degree. Procedure in Prostate Surgery

Dr. Robert Gallo, a pioneering AIDS researcher at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., said he had discussed the concept of the immunization experiments with Dr. [Daniel Zagury] and had told him he did not want to know if he had carried out the experiments unless the doctor had ''good results.'' In such a case, Dr. Gallo added, ''I sure want to know.'' Dr. Zagury, who is known to have done research on other aspects of AIDS in Zaire and elsewhere in Africa, said he had ''no comment'' on his present project because he was ''under oath to the Zairian Government'' not to disclose any information about any of his research studies there until the results were published in scientific journals. Attempts to reach Zairian health officials were unsuccessful. Dr. Gallo described Dr. Zagury as ''a good cellular immunologist'' who had made contributions to the field and who, as a result of his work in Africa, had become passionate about the need to stop the spread of the AIDS virus. He added that Dr. Zagury had grown to believe there was a chance of doing so through ''charging up the cellular immune system.''

Dr. Malcolm A. Martin, chief of the laboratory of molecular microbiology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., said the findings made by his team were ''provocative'' because they indicated that rectal and colon cells could be directly infected without the occurrence of ''trauma,'' or anal tears. ''But we haven't shown it directly in a person,'' Dr. Martin said. Dr. Martin said his findings suggested that the AIDS virus ''may infect vaginal cells, too.'' However, Dr. Martin said cells from the vagina were not tested in his study because cancerous cells from that tissue that can grow in test tubes were not available to his team at the time it began the experiments

The transformation of one type of muscle into another is a ''surprising'' biological feat and ''very significant because in medical school they said you could not do that,'' said Dr. John Watson, who heads the devices and technology branch of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md. The federal agency has financed much of Dr. [Larry Stephenson]'s muscle research over the past seven years

The transformation of one type of muscle into another is a ''surprising'' biological feat and ''very significant because in medical school they said you could not do that,'' said Dr. John T. Watson, who heads the devices and technology branch of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md. The Federal agency has financed much of Dr. [Larry W. Stephenson]'s muscle research over the last seven years. ''It certainly is a fruitful area for research - the results they are getting with these animals is really surprising,'' Dr. Watson said. ''It is another example of integrating biology and engineering in a practical way.'' Findings of Studies Because muscle is a living, contractile tissue with potential for growth with a child, Dr. Stephenson and others believe that an infant's own skeletal muscle could play an important role in the correction of some lethal cardiac birth defects. For instance, Dr. Stephenson said he was working with Dr. William Norwood at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia to fashion a ventricle for newborns with underdeveloped heart chambers such as hypoplastic left heart syndrome, the condition for which an infant known as Baby Fae received a baboon's heart in an unsuccessful experiment in 1984 at Loma Linda medical center in California

[Peter Davies] said he believed the test could be modified for wider use within a year, but further work to make it useful in everyday medicine will take many more years. Davies' team has completed the first stage. It involved doing the test on samples of brain and cerebrospinal fluid kept frozen until the diagnosis of Alzheimer's was documented after death. Davies said the test showed the A-68 protein in all cerebrospinal fluids from Alzheimer patients, and none from the fluid of patients who died of other diseases. Davies said that from experience with a brain bank at Einstein he knew that the label of Alzheimer's in up to 20 per cent of patients is in error because of the imprecision of the diagnosis. Thus if Davies tests cerebrospinal fluid samples from 20 patients whose doctors believe them to have Alzheimer's and he identifies A-68 in 18 and not in two, what does that mean? That the test is not sensitive enough? Or that the doctors misdiagnosed the two patients? Verification of the diagnosis from autopsies might be delayed for years. If further research sows that A-68 appears in brain cells before people develop the symptoms of Alzheimer's, scientists could use this knowledge to find a drug to relieve the symptoms, or even to stop the progression of the disease. A diagnostic test would help eliminate patients with other forms of dementia from the studies, presumably providing more accurate evaluations of a drug's effectiveness on Alzheimer's. Researchers have speculated that imprecision in the diagnosis might be one reason for conflicting results in research studies with experimental drugs

The resulting blood shortages have led at times to the postponement of scheduled surgery, which is one reason more doctors have been asking more patients to donate their own blood. Although proponents of autologous blood transfusions contend that greater use of autologous donors could prevent further shortages in the nation's blood supply, Dr. Peter Page, who heads blood services in the Northeast region of the American Red Cross, stressed: ''We're not doing autologous programs because of a shortage and people wouldn't get blood otherwise. We're doing it because we think it is optimal therapy for each individual.'' Mrs. [Loretta Norrell] said she ''wouldn't have thought about giving my own blood'' had her surgeon, Dr. Christopher B. Michelsen, not suggested it. Given the nature of her surgery, he recommended that she store four units. ''The more I thought about it, the more it made sense,'' Mrs. Norrell said

The new blood test might also be used to monitor the effectiveness of cancer therapies, the researchers said in an article in the issue of The New England Journal of Medicine being published today. An editorial in the same issue calls the findings ''provocative.'' But it adds that the researchers, at the Beth Israel Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, still have ''much work'' to do with much larger numbers of patients'' to determine what value the test has in routine physical examinations and in screening for early cancers among apparently healthy people. Dr. Philip S. Schein, a cancer specialist at the University of Pennsylvania who wrote the editorial, said it was ''essential'' for researchers to conduct more rigorous studies correlating the test results with the nutritional status of patients and with specific patterns of lipids in patients in the studies. Dr. Frank Rauscher of the American Cancer Society said that ''the jury is still out.'' Though his reaction to the report was ''conservative,'' Dr. Rauscher said, ''the fact is they have come up with something we haven't seen before. If this is as good as it sounds, then it's very good indeed.''