Word: units
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...surgery is completely bloodless. The blood that is shed during operations at places like Englewood may be suctioned out by cell-saving machinery, cleaned and then returned to the patient's body. Red blood cells can also be saved through hemodilution. In this procedure, hemoglobin-rich blood is pumped unit by unit from a vein and replaced by an equal number of units of a nonblood fluid to expand the volume to normal; the patient's own drawn blood is held for use after surgery. In another technique, doctors may use albumin, a protein found in plasma that is acceptable...
Their concern is not always misplaced. Blood transfusions, while safer today than in the past, are not risk free. The chance of contracting AIDS from a unit of blood, for instance, is 1 in 500,000, and 1 in 103,000 for hepatitis C, according to the National Institutes of Health. The risk becomes greater as more units are transfused. "If you get 10 units of blood, the risk of HIV infection becomes 1 in 50,000," says George Nemo, leader of a group investigating transfusion medicine at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute...
...deal with the many consequences of severe burns, a growing number of major hospitals have established burn centers, staffed by the medical equivalent of police swat teams, that accommodate every need of critically injured burn victims. America's busiest burn unit is at Manhattan's New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and consists of some 100 doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers and dieticians who treat 1,300 patients a year in the unit's 46-bed facility. "The name of the game in burns is teamwork," says Dr. Roger Yurt, the unit's director since...
Yurt, 52, began specializing in burn treatment while he was a doctor in the U.S. Army. Since he took over the burn unit, he has expanded the team to include highly specialized nurses and even a chaplain, who ministers not only to patients and their families but also to staff members, who are exposed daily to unnerving sights and suffering...
When the skin suffers a deep third-degree burn, two major regulatory systems go awry. The body loses its ability to control its temperature, causing burn patients to shiver even in temperatures as high as 75[degrees]F. Consequently, burn-unit rooms are often kept around 90[degrees]F, and a burn team's first priority is to warm the patients with heated fluids or heat shields suspended above the patient...