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| Health Highlights:
Dec. 15, 2003
Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay: Powell Has Surgery for Prostate Cancer U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell underwent scheduled prostate cancer surgery Monday morning, the State Department announced. "I'm happy to report that he's out of surgery, that everything went fine," department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters after talking with Powell's doctor. Powell's prostate was removed during the two-hour surgery, the Associated Press reports. Powell, 66, had the procedure at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Boucher said the surgery had been scheduled for months and was not an emergency. He said Powell would remain at the hospital for several days, then return to a reduced work schedule. About 190,000 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed in the United States every year, and about 30,000 victims died in 2002, according to American Cancer Society statistics. The disease affects mostly older men, and has a relatively good survival rate depending on how early it's detected. Typical treatments include surgery, radiation therapy, hormonal therapy, or a combination of these. African-American men are more likely to have prostate cancer and to die of it than are white or Asian men. The reasons for this are still not known, the cancer society says. ----- Air Pollution Hard on the Heart Air pollution is a much more dangerous factor for heart attack and other cardiovascular diseases than has been thought, and it is especially dangerous for smokers, a long-term study finds. "It's not that air pollution doesn't affect the lungs," study author C. Arden Pope III, an epidemiologist at Brigham Young University, told HealthDayNews . "It clearly does. But it appears that long-term exposure to air pollution expresses itself more in cardiovascular disease than in respiratory disease." Pope and his colleagues looked at data from the 16-year-long Cancer Prevention Study II, which ran from 1982 and to 1998, and matched death rates and air pollution levels for more than half a million Americans in 156 metropolitan areas. More than 22 percent of the people taking part in the study died -- 45 percent from cardiovascular diseases, including heart attack, heart failure and cardiac arrest, the researchers report in Dec. 16 issue of Circulation . Respiratory disease accounted for only 8.2 percent of the deaths. ----- Docs From Banned Schools Still Practicing in U.S. Nearly 900 doctors practicing across the United States graduated from schools whose medical students are banned in several states because of questionable educational standards at the schools, the Hartford Courant reports. The offshore schools would be "hard-pressed to win accreditation on U.S. soil," according to the newspaper. The four most widely banned schools are Spartan Health Sciences in St. Lucia, the University of Health Sciences in Antigua, the Universidad Tecnologica de Santiago in the Dominican Republic, and the Universidad Eugenio Maria de Hostos, also in the Dominican Republic. Graduates from these and similar schools are banned from practicing in many states but not all, since state licensing rules vary widely, the newspaper reports. Some 6,000 U.S. citizens now attend foreign medical schools, the Courant estimates. The newspaper describes the St. Lucia school as "a single building with four classrooms, a couple of bookshelves, and six computers with shaky Internet access." And a 1985 report from California regulators visiting the same school concluded that the "primary mission of most students was to spend as little time as they needed on St. Lucia to get a passing grade on the standardized exams required for earning a license as a physician in the United States." The patchwork of state-by-state rules governing foreign schools has some experts calling for universal federal regulations in the United States, the report says. ----- Wal-Mart Recalls Holiday Candles
The candle sets were made in China and sold at Wal-Mart stores nationwide from September 2003 through November 2003 for about $10. Consumers should stop using the products immediately and return them to the nearest Wal-Mart for a full refund. For more information, contact Wal-Mart at 1-800-925-6278 between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. Central time Monday through Friday. ----- Flu Vaccine Effectiveness Was Questioned by FDA Panel Members of an advisory panel that backed this year's flu vaccine expressed doubts about its potential effectiveness before recommending it for Food and Drug Administration approval, CNN reports.
Some said they were concerned the vaccine would not provide as much protection against the Fujian strain of flu that was thought most likely to dominate this year's flu season, according to a transcript of the group's deliberations. The Fujian strain, which emerged in the Far East, is now responsible for 75 percent of U.S. flu cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. But drug makers could not culture the Fujian strain in a way to meet FDA standards, forcing the advisory committee to make this year's flu vaccine the same as it was last year. The committee's decision in March has come under a microscope now because the flu is reaching near epidemic proportions in the United States, amid widespread vaccine shortages. The number of states hit hardest by the flu has doubled to 24 overthe past week and now includes most of the western half of thecountry, according to the Associated Press . Nationwide, at least 20 children have died in what could become the worst flu season in years. A batch of 100,000 flu shots for adults was expected to be ready for distribution in the United States starting Saturday. But an additional 150,000 shots for children are not due to arrive until January because of delays in packaging and other administrative problems, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said. Thompson said flu shots are in short supply in the United States because producers last year had a surplus and had to dump 12 million extra doses. This year, they were not prepared to meet demand. "We are doing everything we can," Thompson said. "But [the government] cannot manufacture vaccines." Meanwhile, the manufacturers of tests used to determine if a patient has the flu say the current outbreak has strained their ability to meet demand from hospitals, medical laboratories and doctors' offices. Jack Kraeutler, president of test kit distributor based MeridianBioscience Inc., said the company is running about a week behind infilling orders. And Baltimore-based BD Diagnostics Systems, which alsomanufactures the kits, said it already has received as many ordersas the company got last year for the entire flu season.
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| http://www.hon.ch/News/HSN/516540.html | Last modified: Mon Dec 15 2003 | |||
Wal-Mart is recalling more than 160,000 holiday candle sets
whose paint could ignite and pose a fire hazard. The recall involves
69,804 Snow House Candle gift sets, 29,064 Snowman Candle gift sets, and
62,428 Snowflake Candle gift sets.