Medicine & Health

Photo by Bob Boston / WUSTL PhotoWhat might it cost to get more patients off kidney dialysis?Of the 55,000 Americans waiting for kidney transplants, last year only 13,000 had the operation. Some 3,000 others died on the waiting list. Part of the problem involves obtaining donated organs. Currently only half of potential organ donors actually donate, but even if every eligible donor donated, many on the waiting list still wouldn’t be helped. Living donors are another potential source of organs, and the transplants from living donors also have the greatest chance of success. Encouraging more people to donate a kidney while they are alive could put a big dent in the number of people on the waiting list, but how can society encourage more of those people to donate? Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Minnesota set up a mathematical model to determine whether it might be cost effective to pay people for their kidneys. Potential ethical issues aside, the researchers determined that society could break even by paying as much as $90,000 to those willing to part with a kidney for money.

ICU personnel are instructed in proper placement of catheters to lower infection risk.Because patients in intensive care units (ICUs) are, by definition, in dire health, the consequences of even the slightest medical error can be devastating. Now two quality-improvement studies by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis suggest solutions to two of the most common and dangerous patient safety challenges in ICU patients: restoring normal phosphorus levels and preventing infections related to catheters. The research was a multi-disciplinary effort between physicians, nurses, dietitians and the rest of the surgical ICU team at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. The quality-improvement studies led to dramatic improvements in patient health and safety, and the team believes these initiatives could improve patient health and safety at any ICU in the country.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), car crashes are the leading cause of death for children. Almost 2,000 children age 14 and under are killed in automobile crashes each year and another 280,000 are injured. Proper use of car seats reduces the risk of death significantly — by as much as 71 percent for infants and by about 55 percent for toddlers. The CDC also estimates that 50,000 serious injuries could be prevented and 455 lives saved each year if all children under 5 used safety seats. In spite of the dangers, 40 percent of American children 4 and under routinely ride unrestrained. But Emergency Department physicians at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis are trying to change that. They are targeting low income families, training them in proper use of child safety seats and then giving those families gift certificates that can be redeemed for the seats. The Safe and Secure program hopes to cut down on deaths and injuries from car crashes by providing more than 2,000 free car and booster seats to Missouri families who live below the poverty level as determined by Medicaid.

Scientists have known for years that abnormal activity involving a brain chemical called dopamine is somehow connected to the movements and vocalizations, or tics, associated with Tourette syndrome. Now neuroscience researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found brain activity in these patients is abnormal during memory tasks as well.

Bob BostonResearchers prepare for a leukemia clinical trialA new state-of-the-art research facility dedicated to helping produce modified cells for treatment of cancer and other diseases recently opened at the Siteman Cancer Center. The Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) center is a haven of high-tech environmental control, comparable in some respects to the International Space Station, according to GMP Laboratory Director Gerhard Bauer.

An unpleasant postoperative procedure for thyroid cancer patients who have had their thyroid glands surgically removed may be unnecessary for most patients, according to Washington University researchers at Siteman Cancer Center and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

Some of the world’s top scholars on modern human origins will gather March 26 at Washington University in St. Louis for the last of a four-part series of “Conversations” on key issues that will affect the future of the university, the community and the world. Arts & Sciences is sponsoring the “Conversations,” which are free and open to the public, as part of the university’s 150th anniversary celebration. The “Modern Human Origins” Conversation will be held from 10 to 11:30 a.m. in Graham Chapel.

Do images of the injured and dead have any effect on its viewers? Do images of suffering and violence generate compassion, arouse hunger for revenge, or do nothing? These are the questions writer and cultural critc Susan Sontag tries to answer in her most recent collection of essays, Regarding the Pain of Others, and will share her thoughts with the audience at the next Assembly Series lecture.

Two international research teams — one led by M. Alan Permutt, M.D., professor of medicine and of cell biology and physiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis — have found variations in a gene that may predispose people to type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease. The two research teams, which collaborated extensively, will report their findings in companion articles in the April issue of Diabetes.

To meet design and cost changes, industry and government are considering clockless computing.Computing royalty, including Ivan Sutherland, the father of computer graphics, and Wesley A. Clark, the designer of the world’s first personal computer, will gather at a computing symposium Friday, March 26th, 2004, from 1:00-5:30 p.m. at Washington University in St. Louis’s Whitaker Hall Auditorium. As part of the University’s 150th anniversary of its founding, participants will honor time by contemplating how computing can evade time as the industry prepares to go clockless.