Faculty Bibliography

[...] Mr. Cheney has begun resuming his old activities. Besides the Cino fund-raiser, he attended a round of holiday parties in Washington -- leaving whispers in his trail about his weight loss.

The fundraiser for [Maria Cino], held at the Alexandria, Va., home of [Dick Cheney]'s former aide Mary Matalin, was his first major foray into partisan Washington political theater since receiving a mechanical heart pump in July that has, most doctors say, saved Cheney's life by taking on the task of helping to push blood through his arteries. With George W. Bush having decided to stay largely silent during [Barack Obama]'s tenure, Cheney embraced the role of public critic, accusing the new, young president of rolling back Bush-era policies and undermining the nation's security. In 2009, Cheney and Obama gave dueling speeches on the same day. At 69, Cheney's heart will never beat at full strength again, doctors say. His new mechanical pump, a partial artificial heart known as a ventricular assist device, leaves patients without a pulse because it pushes blood continuously instead of mimicking the heart's own beat. Most pulseless patients feel nothing unusual, but the devices do pose significant risks of infection. They are implanted as a last resort either for permanent use or as a bridge to transplant until a donor heart can be found. Cheney, who has participated in some of the nation's toughest decisions for decades, now faces a crucial one of his own: whether to seek a full heart transplant

Since the Civil War, the White House medical staff has been drawn largely from the military. Staff members plan the president's annual physical, rescue guests choking on hors d'oeuvres at White House functions, help foreign leaders seek care in the United States or elsewhere, and plan emergency care should the president need it while traveling

On a flight to Korea to work on the Japanese B virus, which causes encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, Dr. Chanock's appendix ruptured. Because of the condition, Army regulations prevented him from going to Korea, and so he did infectious-disease research in Tokyo.

'Never in the history of infectious diseases has one person developed so much definitive information about the causes of so much human disease in so short a period of time,' Dr. Dorland Davis, another leading scientist, wrote of Dr. Chanock in 1967

Over the years, Mr. Cheney has had angioplasty to unblock coronary arteries and stents to keep them open; an implanted pacemaker and defibrillator; surgery to repair aneurysms, or ballooning of arteries, behind both knees; and a number of visits to George Washington University Hospital for monitoring and observation, the last in June. In a statement issued on July 14, Mr. Cheney said that he 'was entering a new phase of the disease' with 'increasing congestive heart failure' and chose a pump to 'enable me to resume an active life.'

Over the years, Cheney has had angioplasty to unblock coronary arteries and stents to keep them open; an implanted pacemaker and defibrillator; surgery to repair aneurysms behind both knees; and a number of visits to George Washington University Hospital for monitoring and observation, the most recent in June. In a statement issued on July 14, Cheney said he 'was entering a new phase of the disease' with 'increasing congestive heart failure' and chose a pump to 'enable me to resume an active life.'

Dr. Clement A. Finch, a pioneering hematologist whose research on iron helped improve nutrition and led to advances in diagnosing and treating anemia, died June 28 at his home in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego. Dr. Finch also played a crucial role in showing that hemochromatosis, a genetic disease that causes the body to absorb too much iron from food, could be treated through periodic bleeding

Plum's immensely influential research improved the diagnosis and treatment of patients who lose consciousness from head injuries, strokes, metabolic disorders and drug overdoses.

Without the benefit of now-standard technologies like CT and MRI scans and ultrasound, the medical field had only a rudimentary understanding of ailments like brain swelling, degenerative brain disease, impaired consciousness and brain death, and doctors could treat few of them.