Faculty Bibliography

Dr. Shlomo Mor-Yosef, the director of Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, said Saturday that [Ariel Sharon]'s blood pressure, heart rate and other 'vital signs were within normal limits.' Sharon is breathing with the aid of a mechanical respirator. Separately, the imprisoned Palestinian politician Marwan Barghouti warned against any move to use Sharon's illness as a reason to postpone Palestinian legislative elections scheduled for Jan. 25. 'The Palestinian Authority should avoid making any connection between the health of Sharon and the election date,' he said in a statement published in Palestinian newspapers. 'The election is a national Palestinian issue, and it must not be linked to any foreign concerns such as what is happening in Israel with Sharon.'

Dr. Shlomo Mor-Yosef, the director of Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, said Saturday that Mr. [Ariel Sharon]'s blood pressure, heart rate and other ''vital signs were within normal limits.'' Mr. Sharon is breathing with the aid of a mechanical respirator. Later on Saturday, Dr. Jose Cohen, a member of the team monitoring Mr. Sharon, rated his prospects of survival as ''very high,'' Israel's Channel 2 television reported, according to Reuters. ''I am pretty optimistic about it. We are praying there won't be complications, like catching an infection,'' Dr. Cohen was quoted as saying. But he stressed that Mr. Sharon would not be unscathed, saying, ''To say that after a severe impact like this one there would not be cognitive problems is just not acknowledging reality.'' ''The Palestinian Authority should avoid making any connection between the health of Sharon and the election date,'' he said in a statement published in Palestinian newspapers. ''The election is a national Palestinian issue and it must not be linked to any foreign concerns such as what is happening in Israel with Sharon.''

Mr. [Ariel Sharon], 77, has been in a medically induced coma since two operations on Wednesday. Because of the Sabbath there were to be no further health bulletins on Mr. Sharon until Saturday evening, barring major developments. His chief surgeon, Dr. Felix Umansky, told Agence France-Presse that Mr. Sharon ''can still pull through.'' Still, the renewed bleeding was not a good sign, and no one believes Mr. Sharon will return to office. Mr. [Shimon Peres] left Labor after Mr. [Amir Peretz] defeated him for the party leadership, and he joined his old friend Mr. Sharon in his new Kadima Party. But Mr. Peres may feel less comfortable with a party led by the acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who is 60

While some experts supported the extraordinary treatments that were used to try to save Mr. [Ariel Sharon]'s life, and others opposed them, all agreed that Mr. Sharon's Israeli doctors were working at the very edges of medicine's lifesaving capacities, with little experience and few studies to guide them. Mr. Sharon's second stroke occurred on the eve of a scheduled procedure to close a hole in the wall separating the upper chambers of his heart. Doctors suspected that the clot that caused his first stroke arose from his legs or elsewhere to pass through the hole and ultimately lodge in an artery in the brain. When doctors examined him on Wednesday night, Mr. Sharon complained of chest pain that could have resulted if part of a clot traveled to his lungs and another piece went through the hole to his brain. Or, if he had suffered a heart attack, a clot within the heart might have broken off to lodge in a brain artery. In either case, the anticoagulant therapy could have converted the clot into a hemorrhagic stroke

The recipient of the transplant was a 38-year-old woman who was severely disfigured after being attacked by a dog, said the surgeon, Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard of Lyons. The operation was carried out in Amiens on Sunday. In a brief telephone interview, Dubernard said the two surgical teams grafted a nose, lips and chin from a donor who had been declared brain dead onto the woman's face

Kuschyk, whose main research field is sudden death, said his interest in roller coasters began when a journalist asked about the dangers of coasters to the heart. When Kuschyk searched databases, he found no studies in scientific journals. One potential danger is a coaster's magnetic brakes, which can interfere with the function of pacemakers and defibrillators, Kuschyk said. The study, conducted in Hassloch, Germany, involved 55 adults and Expedition GeForce, a 120-second ride that starts with a 62-meter, or 203-foot, ascent followed by a free fall. The coaster has changes in gravity of six G's in four seconds, and a maximum speed of 120 kilometers an hour, or 75 miles an hour. The author, Dr. Jurgen Kuschyk, a cardiologist at the University of Mannheim, found that one participant's heart rate reached 200 beats a minute, which could cause dangerous rhythm abnormalities

It also urged that adults ages 19 to 65 have the booster against whooping cough, also called pertussis, 10 years after their last shot against the disease. They could receive the vaccine at the same time as their booster against tetanus and diphtheria, because a newly licensed vaccine -- Adacel, made by Sanofi Pasteur -- offers protection against all three diseases. Using estimates made by the disease centers, the panel said routine hepatitis A immunization would prevent up to 180,000 infections and 30,000 illnesses each year among children and adults, advancing the goal of eliminating the disease in this country. Adverse reactions to the vaccine are reported as rare. In recommending hepatitis A shots for toddlers, the panel cited the success of a vaccination program in 17 states that had had a high incidence of the disease: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming

After Dr. Marshall and Dr. [J. Robin Warren] discovered the role of the spiral-shaped H. pylori bacterium, they and others conducted trials showing that antibiotics and drugs inhibiting the production of stomach acid could cure gastritis and most stomach and duodenal ulcers. Dr. [Barry J. Marshall] joined Dr. Warren in studying biopsies from a series of patients. After several attempts, Dr. Marshall succeeded in growing a bacterium that was unknown then; he named it Campylobacter pyloridis, believing that it was a member of the Campylobacter family. (It was later found to be a member of the Helicobacter family and renamed H. pylori.) In earlier interviews, Dr. Marshall described how at age 32, he swallowed a gastroscope tube to allow another doctor to look at his stomach and take several biopsies. These procedures and examinations were needed to document that Dr. Marshall had no H. pylori in his stomach and did not suffer from gastritis or another abnormality