News anchor donates kidney to colleague
Thu, 15 Mar 2007 09:35:06 GMT
LOS ANGELES - A television news anchor donated a kidney to his friend — a colleague at a rival station.
KABC-TV morning co-anchor Phillip Palmer underwent surgery early Wednesday to remove one of his kidneys. The kidney was then transplanted into Dale Davis, who works as a video editor for KCAL/KCBS-TV.
Palmer, who has been with KABC since 1998, told viewers Tuesday that Davis had no shortage of friends willing to help.
"Friends of his lined up to get tested just to see if they could be a living donor, and by giving Dale a kidney also give him a chance at returning to a normal life, a life that will hopefully allow him to see his cousin play college football and his two daughters one day walk down the aisle," he said.
KABC reported that Palmer and Davis were both doing well after surgery and that doctors said Davis' new kidney started functioning almost immediately.
Study Weekend heart attacks riskier
Thu, 15 Mar 2007 03:21:50 GMT
By LINDA A. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
TRENTON, N.J. - Heart attack patients have a slightly higher risk of death if they go to the hospital on the weekend, when they are more likely to miss or wait longer for crucial treatments, one of the largest studies of the issue finds.
Although the increased risk of death is small, roughly 5 percent higher in the month after an attack occurs, it can mean potentially thousands more deaths in the United States annually. The study indicated that weekend patients waited longer for angioplasty and other procedures, likely because of reduced staffing.
Even so, doctors say you shouldn't avoid a weekend hospital visit if you think you are having a heart attack or stroke. A delay of even an hour or two raises chances of death or serious heart or brain damage.
The new study of nearly a quarter-million first-time heart attack patients in New Jersey reflects what smaller previous studies have shown about weekend medical care. Recently published Canadian research also showed stroke patients hospitalized on weekends had a higher chance of dying than those admitted on a weekday.
In the latest study, published in Thursday's
http://www.nejm.org
http://www.americanheart.org
FDA says pills can cause sleepdriving
Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:59:43 GMT
WASHINGTON - All prescription sleeping pills may sometimes cause sleep-driving, federal health officials warned Wednesday, almost a year after the bizarre side effect first made headlines when Rep. Patrick Kennedy crashed his car after taking Ambien.
It's a more complicated version of sleepwalking, but behind the wheel: getting up in the middle of the night and going for a drive — with no memory of doing so.
The
Food and Drug Administration wouldn't say exactly how many cases of sleep-driving it had linked to insomnia drugs, but neurology chief Dr. Russell Katz said the agency uncovered more than a dozen reports — and is worried that more are going uncounted.
Given the millions of prescriptions for insomnia drugs, Katz called the problem rare, and said he was unaware of any deaths. But because sleep-driving is so dangerous — and there are precautions that patients can take — the FDA ordered a series of strict new steps Wednesday.
First, the makers of 13 sleep drugs must put warnings on their labels about two rare but serious side effects:
_sleep-driving, along with other less dangerous "complex sleep-related behaviors" — like making phone calls, fixing and eating food, and having sex while still asleep.
_and life-threatening allergic reactions, as well as severe facial swelling, both of which can occur either the first time the pills are taken or anytime thereafter.
Next, doctors this week will begin getting letters notifying them of the new warnings.
Later this year, all prescription sleeping pills will begin coming with special brochures called "Medication Guides" that spell out the risks for patients in easy-to-understand language.
Sleep-driving made headlines last May when Kennedy, D-R.I., crashed his car into a security barrier outside the U.S. Capitol after taking Ambien and a second drug, Phenergan, an anti-nausea pill that also acts as a sedative. Kennedy has said he had no memory of the event. He pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of prescription drugs, and was sentenced to court-ordered drug treatment and a year's probation.
Ambien isn't the only insomnia drug that can cause sleep-driving — any of the class known as "sedative-hypnotics" can, FDA's Katz stressed Wednesday.
To lower the risk of a sleep-driving episode, he advised patients to never take any prescription insomnia drug along with alcohol or any other sedating drug. Also, don't take higher-than-recommended doses of the pills.
"We really want people to know these things can occur, and these sleep behaviors can be perhaps to a large extent mitigated by behaviors the patients can control," he said.
Some of the insomnia drugs may be riskier than others, so FDA also recommended that manufacturers conduct clinical trials to figure that out.
The drugs are: Ambien; Butisol sodium; Carbrital; Dalmane; Doral; Halcion; Lunesta; Placidyl; Prosom; Restoril; Rozerem; Seconal; Sonata.
Fewer than one in 1,000 patients in studies of Ambien reported somnambulism — a scientific term that includes the sleep behaviors flagged by the FDA — said Lisa Kennedy, a spokeswoman for manufacturer Sanofi-Aventis SA, who is not related to the congressman. The side effect has remained similarly rare since widespread sales began, she said.
Shock treatment sought for autistic man
Wed, 14 Mar 2007 23:34:28 GMT
By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer
CHICAGO - Bradley Bernstein's parents say an electric cattle prod is the only thing that stops him from banging his head and violently punching his eyes, nearly blinding himself.
The Illinois couple's fight to continue shock treatment on their severely autistic 48-year-old son and the uproar over a Massachusetts school that uses similar treatment, have pulled back the curtain on this extreme form of behavior modification. Critics call it outmoded, barbaric and unethical.
Even a leading supporter of the technique, Harvard-educated psychologist Matthew
http://www.judgerc.org