Word: casted
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When Emanuel Brachfield's broken tibia failed to heal after six months in a cast and several operations, even his doctors began to worry. Reason: if fractured bones do not knit, the affected limb may eventually have to be amputated. Brachfield, 70, a retired New York City office worker, had heard from his physician that doctors at Manhattan's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center were experimenting with a treatment that uses electricity to mend broken bones. He tried it. After eight weeks of electrotherapy, Brachfield has shed cast and crutches and is walking normally again...
...technique devised by Brighton, Teflon-coated electrodes are implanted directly into the bone around the fracture site even before the broken limb is placed in a cast. The electrodes are then hooked up to a small 7.5-volt battery that is strapped to the cast; a tiny current of 10 to 20 microamperes is directed into the area of the break. The voltage is applied about twelve hours a day for two to four months. Then the electrodes are surgically removed...
Bassett has been able to avoid surgery entirely in some cases by resorting to a bit of electromagnetic prestidigitation. He attaches a set of electrical coils, like those in a small motor, on the outside of the cast directly around the region of the break. In that way he is able to induce an electrical current within the bone. The treatment requires only a 10-volt portable powerpack, can be operated by the patient at home, and is continued for about the same two to four months as Brighton's method...
Bassett reports solid bone growth in 80% of 308 patients; Brighton says that he has achieved an 84% cure rate in his 200 cases. Their patients have even more reason to be pleased. As his cast and magnetic coils were removed last month, Brachfield asked anxiously: "Can I play shuffleboard? Can I bowl?" Bassett hesitated a moment, looked at an X ray of the healed fracture, then confidently assured his patient that he would soon be playing both sports...
Angelo and Isabella alone in the cast delve into their characters, and mine the subtleties of their scenes. Kirsten Giroux's dark-voiced Isabella is the best performance of the evening--she makes this occasionally self-righteous, all-too-correct role warm and sympathetic. James Kitendaugh plays Angelo as a thoughtful, principled man with too many layers of civilization smothering his emotions. As his control begins to go, the fidgeting he uses to signal his tense repression first accelerates and then disappears altogether, as he gives in to his desire...