Word: russeks
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...chest of a heart-disease victim to implant a piece of one of the patient's own veins or arteries to carry blood around an obstruction in the coronary artery that feeds the heart muscle. But is the bypass operation always necessary? Not according to Dr. Henry Russek, a professor of cardiology at New York Medical College. At a conference on cardiology at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston last week, Russek claimed that drugs and other forms of medical care are far better treatment than surgery for most cases of angina pectoris, the pains arising from the oxygen...
...Russek's remarks touched a raw nerve among the surgeons attending the meeting. Boosters of the bypass operation credit it with saving at least 60,000 lives-most of them in the past five years -and offering new hope to heart-disease victims who might otherwise become cardiac cripples. The operation is now being performed at some 600 U.S. hospitals, and many surgeons believe that it should be used even more frequently...
Unlike numerous cardiologists who scorn surgery, Russek acknowledges the value of the coronary bypass in some cases. But he questions whether the operation is as safe as its advocates claim...
...postoperative complications. There are risks even at some of the university hospitals offering the operation. Though operating room mortality may be less than 5%, complications such as myocardial infarction (the classic heart attack), brain damage, hemorrhage, kidney failure or closure of the bypass are not uncommon. Despite these risks, Russek noted the tendency of some doctors to perform the operation as a "preemptive procedure" on patients who have not yet experienced angina or who suffer only mild symptoms...
Before he could fit an artificial arm, Dr. Russek had the patient (who is righthanded) exercise the phantom: standing in front of a blackboard, he closed his eyes, and "practiced" writing with his nonexistent left hand. The mental effort evidently worked through the nerve stumps and nearby muscles. After months of phantom writing, the electrician said that he had brought the phantom arm around in front of his body, and could raise it over his head. More tangibly, scar tissue that had been painfully contracted was stretched, so that an extensive grafting operation became unnecessary. Now virtually free of phantom...