Word: less
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...unhappy option for the patients is to reduce their income and assets enough (to less than $5,200 a year in income and $3,100 in assets in New York, for example) to qualify for state Medicaid coverage. Unless Washington has a change of heart, each of the 50 states must act to fill the void or the lack of cash may shorten thousands of lives...
...there is a new and far less traumatic option for some disk patients. Known as percutaneous automated diskectomy, it is an outpatient procedure performed under local anesthesia through a tiny (2 mm long) incision in the back. Developed by Radiologist Gary Onik and Neurosurgeon Joseph Maroon of Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, the operation breezed through its clinical trials, and has been performed on some 15,000 patients around the country -- at approximately one-third the cost of conventional surgery...
...procedure usually takes less than an hour and requires no stitches. Patients walk out of the hospital with only a Band-Aid over the incision. Recalls Sheila Aronoff, who had the surgery at Allegheny General last year: "I could feel the pain start to leave while I was in the recovery room. Except for those whose jobs require physical labor, the vast majority of patients are back at work in a week or two. Discomfort is rare: most patients need only a non-narcotic analgesic, if anything. Says Onik: "The biggest problem is keeping them from doing too much...
Despite its high marks, the new operation can be less successful than a laminectomy and is not for everyone. Onik says it works only for a "contained" rupture -- a disk that has become distended but has not yet broken through the fibers that hold its contents in place. Moreover, 12% to 15% of Onik's patients require a second operation, usually a laminectomy, because X rays failed to reveal that the tissue had already burst out of the disk and lodged against a nerve. An additional 10% experience only partial relief but are not in enough pain to want another...
...prepare for the hectic Feast of the Assumption weekend that ended last Monday, French officials advised local authorities of their power to suspend the licenses of reckless drivers on the spot. A magistrate in one high- accident district promptly seized four licenses in less than 45 minutes. Zealous public servants suspended more than 2,000 licenses during the three- day holiday...