Word: comas
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Shortly after an English couple finished a hearty breakfast in Guernsey last month, both went into comas; the fried mushrooms they had eaten were of the poisonous variety known as death cup. Flown to King's College Hospital in London, they were rushed to a section called the liver research unit, where the husband came out of his coma. But the wife's condition worsened, and doctors decided to connect her circulatory system to the only artificial "liver machine" in the world. Four days later, after being close to death from acute liver poisoning, she regained consciousness...
Williams is eager to try the machine on more patients, who will not be hard to come by. Many victims of viral hepatitis and of adverse reactions to anesthetics or other drugs develop hepatic coma. The condition may also be brought on by drug abuse; 1,500 persons were admitted to English hospitals in 1971 for liver poisoning caused by Paracetamol, a painkilling tablet...
Williams is proceeding cautiously, watching for side effects and accepting only patients in coma. But results so far make him confident that his machine can eventually sharply reduce the death rate from acute liver failure, which in Britain now kills eight out of every ten victims...
Infinitely more painful for the physician than denying a coma-stricken patient a vegetable existence is telling an outwardly active one that he cannot afford to live. Artificial kidney machines have proved the first example of a lifesaving treatment whose staggering cost had prevented widespread use. Sessions are long and painful, and the relief is only temporary, but for those who have had their kidneys destroyed by disease, it is the only alternative to a transplantation or death. Before adequate Federal funding was available, doctors in the field had to decide who would be one of the thousands...
Speaking on the article--which discussed racial schisms on his team--Coma said, "You bet it's a distortion. Just like an afterbirth is a distortion. They didn't play like they hated me, did they...