Faculty Bibliography

Dr. Leonard Wartofsky, chairman of the department of medicine at Washington Hospital Center, said that he was 'surprised Mr. [William Rehnquist] has done so well.' Wartofsky, a thyroid cancer specialist, said the chief justice's case was 'a big topic' among thyroid experts. 'It's on people's minds' and 'we talk,' he said

[Jeanna Giese] told her pediatrician, Dr. Howard Dhonau, about the bat shortly before she left Fond du Lac, Dr. Willoughby said. Dr. Dhonau passed on the information to Children's Hospital, where Dr. Willoughby initially was skeptical about the possibility that she had rabies, largely because it is so rare. He learned that laboratory researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris had shown that an anesthetic, ketamine, was active against the rabies virus. So Dr. Willoughby proposed giving Jeanna ketamine to induce a deep coma and midazolam, a sedative, to prevent hallucinations. Colour Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Jeanna Giese greets Dr. Rodney Willoughby Jr. The two made medical history when Jeanna contracted rabies from ...; Colour Photo: ...a bat bite and survived -- the first time anyone has lived through the rare illness without vaccination -- thanks to Willoughby's radical treatment involving a drug regimen that put Jeanna into a coma for a week

Dr. Peter Piot, who directs the United Nations AIDS program, said: ''The epidemic has yet to display a natural saturation point. In Swaziland, the country most affected by AIDS in the world, adult prevalence continues to climb; 42.6 percent of pregnant women there tested positive for H.I.V. in 2004. ''In East Africa, for example, in every big city'' there had been declines in the rates for young people, ''and particularly among women and girls,'' Dr. Piot said in an interview. He cited Addis Ababa, Kigali, Lusaka and Nairobi -- the capitals of Ethiopia, Rwanda, Zambia and Kenya -- largely because they are the places with the most extensive AIDS education and prevention programs, particularly for young people. For the first time, truly comprehensive responses to AIDS, including prevention and treatment, are emerging, Dr. Piot said. ''Iran has one of the best AIDS programs,'' he added, citing in particular its needle-exchange efforts

Surgeons can generally learn the on-pump operation faster than the off-pump technique because it is technically less demanding. Also, the report said, surgeons can generally perform more grafts, if necessary, in an on-pump bypass, and the grafts may stay open longer. A controversy has developed over some evidence that a small but significant number of on-pump bypass patients suffer a degree of cognitive impairment like memory and attention deficits and language problems. Such problems tended to occur less among patients whose bypasses were performed with the beating-heart technique compared with the stopped-heart technique, the team said. The extent of the decrease was not detailed. The most conclusive benefit of off-pump over on-pump operations was for patients who had deposits of calcium in their aortas, the body's main artery. When surgeons clamp the aorta in the on-pump technique, small pieces can break off to cause disabling and fatal strokes

The scientists analyzed the genetic makeup of patients taking warfarin in clinics at the University of Washington in Seattle and Washington University in St. Louis and found that they fell into three dosing groups -- low, intermediate and high. The genetic variations identified in the study correlated with the grouping, suggesting the findings hold promise for simplifying warfarin therapy, the scientists reported in The New England Journal of Medicine. The scientists identified genetic variations, matched them to the doses warfarin patients were taking, and found that patients with a particular variation of the gene usually took similar doses of warfarin. The VKORC1 gene accounted for 25 percent of the overall variation in warfarin doses in the studies -- what Dr. [Mark J. Rieder] said he believes is the largest genetic variation affecting warfarin

Dr. [Sandra J. Horning], who practices and does research on lymphomas at Stanford, wanted to be a doctor since she was 14. Her father died of cancer when she was 21 and a medical student. Her mother has survived two types of cancer. That family experience ''helped me in a way understand and perhaps be better prepared to deal with some of the emotional issues that are related to cancer diagnosis, treatment and survival,'' Dr. Horning said. ''But at the same time I thought about my career,'' Dr. Horning said. ''Medicine is more than a career. For me it is a passion.'' As an oncologist, she was better informed than other people. Still, she said, she sought opinions from breast cancer specialists elsewhere, and she avoided directing her care. So she bought a wig. Her patients, friends and family, said Dr. Horning, who is a blond, ''saw me as a redhead.'' Dr. Horning said that in caring for patients she placed communications at the top of the list. The reason, she said, is that while she was training to become an oncologist, a patient told her that whenever Dr. Saul A. Rosenberg, Dr. Horning's mentor, entered the room, his presence made that seriously ill patient feel better

The study's authors, from Tufts University, said it was prudent for doctors to consider prescribing rival statins instead of Crestor as a first therapy to prevent heart attacks and stroke. They and other experts like Dr. Valentin Fuster, chief of cardiology at Mount Sinai Medical Center, said Crestor could be useful for high-risk patients for whom rival statins did not lower cholesterol levels to recommended ranges. After an exhaustive review of the same information used by Dr. [Richard H. Karas]'s team and Public Citizen, the drug agency concluded that ''all of the available evidence'' showed that Crestor had no greater risk of muscle toxicity or serious kidney damage than the rival statins Lipitor, Pravachol and Zocor. Patients taking Crestor were eight times more likely to develop rhabdomyolysis, kidney failure or spillage of protein in the urine than patients taking Pravachol, 6.5 times more likely to develop such complications than patients taking Lipitor, and 2.2 times more likely than those taking Zocor

The governing body, the World Health Assembly, also said it favored the idea of sending small fragments of the smallpox virus to other laboratories to try to develop better diagnostic tests for the virus. But before any experiments proceed, the assembly said, researchers must provide details about the experiments and planned security precautions. The assembly, representing 192 countries, also approved the health agency's work to create a global reserve of 33.5 million doses of vaccine to prevent smallpox, which killed about a fourth of those infected, if the virus is somehow reintroduced

In the study, survival strongly correlated with the number of lymph nodes removed, Dr. [Natalie G. Coburn] said. Standard guidelines call for removal and examination of at least 15 lymph nodes for stomach cancer. Adherence to the guidelines varied geographically. More than twice as many patients in Hawaii (33.4 percent) survived five years after detection of stomach cancer than in Utah (16.2 percent). In Hawaii, the median number of lymph nodes removed was 15, compared with 6 in Utah. But even in Hawaii, 47.5 percent of patients did not have enough lymph nodes removed, Dr. Coburn said

A drug now used to treat breast cancer might be able to prevent prostate cancer in men with a precancerous condition, doctors said here Saturday. Another study suggested that the widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins might stave off breast cancer. The prostate cancer study was a randomized clinical trial involving 514 men with precancerous lesions analogous to polyps for colon cancer. The condition is called prostate intraepithelial neoplasia, or P.I.N. After statistically controlling for a number of factors like age, smoking and diabetes, the researchers found a 51 percent lower risk of breast cancer among the statin users, Dr. [Vikas Khurana] said. He said data on the specific statins that were prescribed have not been analyzed yet