Word: chest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Berde's research interests is developing local anesthetics that will work for days or a week after surgery instead of for six hours, as existing drugs do. Prolonged pain after chest or abdominal surgery is not just unpleasant; it can be harmful as well, keeping a patient from taking deep breaths or coughing--things they need to do. Pain can also keep people bedridden, impeding their recovery. "Our major aim is to get people up quickly," Berde says. "They're less likely to develop pneumonia, lose muscle mass and have trouble sleeping." Ambulatory adults are also less prone to blood...
...victim was a woman in her late 60s or early 70s who, in despair, had pointed a pistol at her chest and pulled the trigger. As she lay in the emergency room of a small hospital in California's Central Valley, her condition presented no great medical challenge; it was fairly straightforward compared with many of the messy youth shootings that confront E.R. doctors nowadays. Yet the woman's attempted suicide proved to be an epiphany for the young physician who attended her. It not only altered his life and career but also would affect countless other victims of gunshot...
Despite her serious injury, the woman was still conscious, expressing regret for her suicide attempt and love for her husband. Dr. Garen Wintemute, the E.R. chief, and his colleagues connected intravenous lines, inserted a chest tube to keep her lungs from collapsing and took X rays before cleaning and sewing up the small wound next to her breastbone. In the midst of their lifesaving struggle, Wintemute reflected on a disconcerting fact: how much easier it is to inflict serious--even fatal--injury with a firearm than with just about any other hand weapon...
...After the nurses gently unwind the temporary loose gauze twined around her head, neck and chest, the woman is anesthetized, a breathing tube is placed in her mouth, and her temperature and blood pressure are monitored. While surgeon Alain Polynice finds her blood pressure to be within normal bounds, he notes that her temperature is slightly lower than desired, calls engineering to ask that the room temperature be raised. Then he places a bubbled heat blanket between her legs...
...surgical assistant begins washing the woman's left leg with a soapy solution, sterilizing it so that swatches of it can later be peeled away to graft onto her chest and neck...