Some forms of irregular, ultra-fast heart beating may be corrected by heat generated from radio-frequency waves, providing an alternative to major surgery or implantation of a pacemaker.
For eight months, cardiologists at the University of Michigan Medical Center have been treating irregular heartbeat, called tachycardia, with the new technique.
Heat is used to incapacitate a small part of heart tissue responsible for making the heart beat too rapidly. ”Using wires that are put in through a vein, we can get to the critical spot in the heart and deliver radio frequency energy-sort of like microwave energy, to use a loose analogy,” said Dr. Fred Morady, director of Michigan`s clinical electrophysiology lab. ”The tissue right at the end of the catheter is heated up and cauterized so we can selectively knock out the tachycardia and maintain the normal heartbeats. So now these patients can be cured, and they don`t need a pacemaker. They don`t need an operation, and they don`t have to take medication anymore.”
Morady said the technique has been used on 80 patients with two types of heartbeat irregularities and the success rate has been about 90 percent.
EARLY VACCINATION A move is afoot to give small babies a vaccine that protects against meningitis and related infections caused by the Haemophilus influenzae Type B (Hib) bacteria. The vaccine is approved for use in infants at least 15 months old, but some physicians believe it should be administered beginning when babies are 2 months old. Dr. Steven Black and colleagues at the Kaiser Permanente Pediatric Vaccine Study Center in northern California say their studies of more than 28,000 babies indicate the vaccine is safe and effective in the younger infants. ”The importance of our study is that we now have evidence that this vaccine appears to be effective in younger infants, who are much more likely to get meningitis and related diseases caused by this bacteria. This is significant because more than three of every four cases of meningitis that occur in the United States occur in young infants 2 to 18 months old.” The California study supports findings of a study done in Finland. The information is being presented to the federal Food and Drug Administration, which could lower the age at which the vaccine may be given.
DRUG ABUSE COSTS Society`s growing cost for out-of-control drug use is outlined in a report by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore that compared the situation in 1983 and in 1988.
Diagnoses of drug abuse or dependence among Hopkins patients rose from 0.6 percent in 1983 to 3.5 percent five years later.
Services billed by the medical department for these patients jumped from $345,000 to $2.27 million. Of 71 intravenous drug users, 42 percent were infected with the AIDS virus. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also noted a growing resentment among doctors and nurses who must care for uncooperative, abusive, drug-crazed patients who disrupt the hospital environment.
SMOKING AND STROKE Young adults who smoke are nearly 1 1/2 times as likely to suffer a stroke as non-smokers, a study at the University of Iowa suggests.
The study by Dr. Betsy B. Love and colleagues focused on patients between 15 and 45. They found that among smokers, the risks of stroke increased with the amount a person smoked. For this population, the authors wrote in the June Archives of Neurology, smoking was a statistically more significant risk factor for stroke than diabetes or high blood pressure.
AIDS, TRANSFUSIONS Fear of AIDS has dramatically altered blood transfusion practices in the United States, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows. Patients undergoing elective surgery are more likely to provide their own blood in advance so it may be transfused if needed, and surgeons are much less likely to give a patient any blood at all than in the past.
The study found that in 1984, transfusions of whole blood and red cells peaked at 50.6 units per 1,000 population. By 1987, that number had fallen to 47.6 units per 1,000 population.
WHITE SUICIDES White males are far and away the group most likely to commit suicide in the U.S., an analysis by Stanley Kranczer, a demographer for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., finds. According to the latest information, 92 percent of all suicides in the U.S. involved whites, and 79 percent of the total were men.
