Measuring out medicine (book excerpt: The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center)

December 2nd, 2007    Posted by: Dr. Dobson

While the match is made by a computer, the decision whether someone actually gets on a list, and his medical urgency classification, is made by local transplant committees. At Columbia-Presbyterian, the adult transplant coordinating committee meets every Friday morning, chaired jointly by Yoshifumi Naka [MD, PhD], the transplant surgery program director and Donna Mancini [MD], a professor of medicine and director of the Center for Advanced Cardiac Care, who oversees transplant cardiology. There are usually about 30 people around the table — transplant cardiologists, social workers, psychiatrists, infection specialists, neurologists, surgeons, transplant nurses and others. Most of the cardiologists are from Mancini’s section, but very occasionally an outside cardiologist may attend as well, to help advocate a listing for one of his patients.

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Needle-stick injuries are common but unreported by surgeons in training

August 21st, 2007    Posted by: Dr. Dobson

A survey of nearly 700 surgical residents in 17 U.S. medical centers finds that more than half failed to report needle-stick injuries involving patients whose blood could be a source of HIV, hepatitis and other infections.

Authors of the report ??” appearing in the June 28 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine ??” say most residents in the survey falsely believe that reporting and getting timely medical attention won??™t prevent infection. Residents also say reporting takes ???too much time??? and interrupts their work.

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