Word: sickest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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About 70 miles east of Pittsburgh, Laurel Highlands is a prison and a nursing home rolled into one for people like Bedarka. For the sickest of the sick, there is the 85-bed long-term-care unit, staffed by 48 nurses around the clock. In a dayroom, half a dozen elderly men gaze at an ancient TV, mesmerized by Judge Judy. Amputees pushing manually operated wheelchairs queue up at the medication counter, where a cheery nurse dispenses pills for diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Nearby, a delusional man rants that State Road 31 is a barrier protecting him from...
...toward the bottom. Reason: the Federal Government was planning to institute a new system for organ allocation. Makenzie would have to compete for an organ with not only patients in her local area but liver patients all across the country as well. She might have been one of the sickest in Iowa, but in that larger population, she would have been considered relatively well off. Fortunately, Makenzie got her transplant last...
Working in his subpar facilities in Curitiba, Batista becomes discouraged by the U.S. medical system's reluctance to help the sickest patients. "In America," he says, "if a doctor doesn't do anything and the patient dies, it's called a natural death. But if the doctor tries to do something to save that person and he dies, the doctor gets blamed for the death. That's backward thinking." The sickest patients excite Batista most because, he says, "they are the ones I can help the most...
Doctors first tried the treatment on their sickest patients. Not everyone responded or could even tolerate the combination of powerful drugs. But in a number of cases, the cocktail forced the disease into remission. Doctors watched in amazement as their patients' blood tests showed a precipitous drop in the amount of HIV. "We have seen patients whose viral load has gone below our ability to find it," says Dr. Paul Volberding of San Francisco General Hospital. "The question is, Can we keep it that low, and what will happen to the body with that kind of treatment?" There...
Community hospitals specialize in primary care and may lack advanced technology, so they can afford to lower their prices. Often, they refer their sickest patients to the teaching hospitals...