Lakers' Brown to undergo shoulder surgery

Los Angeles Lakers center Kwame Brown, who underwent reconstructive surgery on his left ankle last month, is scheduled for an operation on his right shoulder Wednesday.

Brown, who will have a bursa sac and scar tissue removed, is expected to make a full recovery. A timeline for his return will be determined after surgery.

Brown had ankle surgery on May 29, and Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak doesn't expect that to keep him from being at or near 100 percent when training camp begins in October.

The 25-year-old Brown averaged 8.4 points, 6.0 rebounds and 1.2 blocked shots in 41 games last season.

He missed the first seven games while recovering from an injured right shoulder and was healthy after that until severely spraining his left ankle Dec. 31, when he accidentally landed on the foot of Philadelphia's Andre Miller after blocking a shot. That forced him to miss 34 games.


Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
source:www.sportingnews.com

Convicted murderer wants taxpayers to pay for sex-change operation

Robert Kosilek was convicted of strangling his wife in 1990. Now known as Michelle, Kosilek is serving a life sentence in Massachusetts.

For the last year, he has been fighting the state in federal court, trying to convince a judge to order the government to pay for a sex-change operation. His lawyers say by refusing to pick up the tab for the surgery, corrections officials are subjecting the 58-year-old inmate to cruel and unusual punishment.

"I would not want to continue existing like this," Kosilek testified, according to the Associated Press.

The wire service says its review of court records shows that the Correction Department has spent more than $52,000 to procure expert testimony from doctors who say Kosilek doesn't need the $20,000 operation.

"Anybody serving a sentence is deprived of certain choices in his life," John Moses, the prosecutor in Kosilek's murder case, told CNN back in 2002. "He was 41 years old when he killed Sheryl Kosilek. He didn't try to get a sex change operation at that time. Now he's 53 years of age, and he wants the state to pay for that?"

USA TODAY ran a wire story last year about this and other cases in which transgendered inmates are seeking sex-change surgeries.
source:blogs.usatoday.com

Pa. Releases Surgery-Error Data

Pennsylvania hospitals reported making serious mistakes in the operating room _ using the wrong procedure, operating on the wrong body part or even the wrong patient _ 174 times during a 2 1/2 year period, according to a report released Tuesday by the state's patient-safety agency.

The state Patient Safety Authority, which collects data on medical errors and advises health care facilities on how to improve their practices, issued its report on so-called "wrong-site" surgeries as part of an effort to eliminate them.

Between June 2004 and December 2006, the time period the authority studied, it also received reports of 253 incidents that could have resulted in wrong-site errors but were corrected before an operation began.

"Every other day in Pennsylvania, we have a report of a wrong-site surgery being caught either before or after the start of the operation," said Dr. Stan Smullens, the authority's vice chairman and chief medical officer at Jefferson Health System in Radnor.

Of the surgeries involving serious mistakes, 69 percent were on the wrong side of the body, 14 percent were on the wrong body part, 9 percent were the wrong procedure and 8 percent were on the wrong patient.

One example cited in the report involved a patient who was supposed to have his right Achilles tendon repaired along with a joint in his left hand.

Although the correct body parts were marked when the patient was lying on his back, he was turned on his stomach for the surgery. Because the markings were hidden, the doctor erroneously operated on the patient's left Achilles tendon and right hand instead, the report said.

The report attributed the mishaps to factors such as surgeons and nurses failing to review what needs to be done before cutting; not double-checking where surgical sites have been marked; and improperly positioning the patient on the operating table.

It is difficult to measure how Pennsylvania compares with other states because not all require hospitals to report medical errors, and the reporting criteria can vary among those that do, said Mike Doering, the authority's interim executive director.

Over the summer, the authority plans to visit selected hospitals and gather information on strategies they are using to prevent wrong-site surgeries, Doering said. It will use that information to provide guidance to all hospitals, he said.

"We have a good idea of what works and what doesn't work, but we want to go observe," Doering said.

Dr. Anthony J. Ardire of the Lehigh Valley Health System in Allentown said his hospital has eliminated errors involving surgeries and other procedures, such as colonoscopies, since it instituted several new policies 18 months ago. One new rule requires at least two staff members to conduct preoperative reviews to ensure that a surgery is performed properly.

"A resident or a physician has to make a decision that this isn't going to happen to their patient," Ardire said. "They really have to say, 'We're not going to take shortcuts. We're going to do it right.'"

Although the patient safety authority's efforts to advise hospitals are critical, the agency does not have the power to force hospitals to follow its recommendations, said RoseMarie B. Greco, director of the Governor's Office of Health Care Reform.

"It is hospital leadership who has that authority, and government who has the responsibility to ensure that authority is being used to protect patients," Greco said.
source:www.chron.com

Two convicted for porn spam operation

Two men were convicted in Arizona Monday on eight criminal counts, including money laundering and transportation of obscene materials, in connection with running a pornographic spamming business, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

A jury in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona in Phoenix convicted Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, California, and James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, Arizona, on all eight counts they faced. The trial, which began June 5, was the first to include charges under the Controlling the Assault of Non-solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act, a law passed by the U.S. Congress in 2003 in an effort to crack down on unsolicited commercial e-mail.

The men made "millions of dollars by sending unwanted sexually explicit emails to hundreds of thousands of innocent people, including families and children," Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general for the DOJ's Criminal Division, said in a statement.

Kilbride and Schaffer started their spamming operation in 2003, and the two made more than $2 million by sending out spam e-mail advertising porn Web sites, the DOJ said. The two earned a commission for each person directed to one of the Web sites.

"Hard-core" pornographic images were embedded in each e-mail, and were visible to any person who opened the e-mail, the DOJ said.

Kilbride and Schaffer were convicted of two violations of the CAN-SPAM Act. One of the counts charged that Kilbride and Schaffer sent multiple electronic commercial mail messages containing falsified header information. In the other count, the two were charged with sending e-mail using domain names that were registered using false information.

Kilbride and Schaffer were also convicted on one count of conspiring to commit fraud in connection with electronic mail and four counts of felony obscenity charges for transporting hard-core pornographic images of adults. They were also convicted on a federal money laundering charge for moving funds inside and out of the U.S. to conceal the ownership of those funds.

The two face a maximum penalty of five years in prison for each CAN-SPAM and obscenity offense, as well as a fine of up to $500,000, and a maximum of 20 years in prison for money laundering. Sentencing is set for Sept. 24.

When the CAN-SPAM Act went into effect in January 2004, Kilbride and Schaffer arranged to remotely log on to servers in Amsterdam, to make it look like their spam messages were being sent from abroad, when in reality Kilbride and Schaffer were operating their business from inside the U.S., the DOJ said.

Eight U.S. residents who complained to either the Federal Trade Commission or AOL LLC traveled from Massachusetts, Texas, Iowa and California to testify in the trial and to describe how their families, including some children, received the spam.

AOL and the FTC received more than 660,000 complaints about the defendants' pornographic spam, including some from people who had set parental controls to protect their children from accessing graphic sexual content.
source:computerworld.com

Turk army chief reaffirms need for N.Iraq incursion

The head of Turkey's powerful armed forces reaffirmed on Wednesday his view that a cross-border operation into northern Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels based there would be beneficial.

"I have said (in April) that we need a cross-border operation and that this would bring benefits. I repeat this view now," General Yasar Buyukanit told a news conference shown live on Turkish television.
Army Spc. Aaron Emerson, who recently received orders to deploy to Iraq, lets wife Hillary Emerson shave his head at his going-away party as family members look on in Lawrence, Kansas, June 16, 2007. In the big yard of an old blue farmhouse, around a worn wooden table only partly shaded from the Kansas sun, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins of Emerson spent a summer day saying their goodbyes, offering quiet prayers and seeking a few moments of laughter. To match feature USA-IRAQ/FAREWELL
source:www.alertnet.org

Operation toyi-toyi

In theatre H35 at Johannesburg Hospital, surgeons were performing a delicate life-saving heart operation.

Twelve-year-old Sowetan Siphamandla Mbatha was undergoing an operation - sponsored by The Star - to remove part of the membrane around his heart.

Just metres away, striking nurses dressed in red and black waved placards and toyi-toyied in the corridors outside.

The public sector strike, now in its fourth week, has severely disrupted hospitals and schools across the country. At Johannesburg Hospital, the effect was clear.
The bins in the basement parking lot overflowed with rubbish while the floors of the hospital - usually shiny clean - were grubby and littered with dirt.

Cooldrink cans and chocolate wrappers lay scattered on the hospital benches. Buckets full of medical waste lay undisposed.

Armed soldiers - brought in to maintain order and keep the hospital running - swept floors and helped non-striking workers attend to patients. None of the non-striking hospital staff wore uniforms.

A staff member who spoke to The Star said a nurse had been assaulted by striking colleagues in the hospital corridors.

Posters stuck along the wall alerted people that the hospital was only seeing to emergency cases until the strike ended.
At the hospital's "green block", just metres from the operating theatres, about 10 striking nurses sang revolutionary songs and stomped their feet.

One placard, among the many they hoisted, read: "Manto don't think it's over. There is secondary rejection and you'll back our hands back off" - in reference to the health minister's liver transplant performed at the hospital three months ago.

On Wednesday, Cosatu was expected to meet to discuss the government's final wage offer of 7,5 percent. The unions initially demanded a 12 percent increase but revised their demands to nine percent last week.

Meanwhile, oblivious to Tuesday's protests at Johannesburg Hospital, surgeons operated on Siphamandla. Just four months ago, Siphamandla was an active 12-year-old boy. He played soccer for hours on the streets of Zola in Soweto, went to school, studied hard and helped out around the house.

But in March, his mother, Zuzile, watched her son's health deteriorate.

"At first I thought he just had a cough, and took him to the clinic for a check-up. They did not know what was wrong, and after x-rays, referred me to (Chris Hani) Baragwanath Hospital," she said.

There, doctors discovered that he had a condition known as constrictive pericarditis, where the heart's outer membrane, the pericardium, prevents the heart from beating normally.

Siphamandla's heart couldn't fill up with enough blood to pump to the rest of his body. Because of this, his body, including his lungs, swelled up with excess water. He needed surgery.

Johannesburg Hospital, which performs all state heart surgery in the region, has a waiting list of 300 children, and all the doctors at Bara could do was drain off the excess fluid from his lungs. This helped for a while, but when his mom took him for a check-up last week, his condition had worsened and urgent surgery was needed.

The Boikanyo Foundation, set up by the Golden East Round Table Association and Johannesburg Hospital to raise money to help ease the massive backlog of children on the surgery waiting list, heard about Siphamandla's case.

Last month, the foundation paid for open-heart surgery on five-month-old Kgaotsang Goretetseng, who was born with a hole in her heart. After the surgery, The Star donated R100 000 to the fund. It was with this money that the foundation was able to provide Siphamandla with surgery.

On Wednesday, a team of surgeons led by Krubin Naidoo and Kathy Vanderdonck waited as Siphamandla was wheeled into theatre H35.

Back at the children's ward, his mother sat anxiously where his bed had stood.

"I am very excited about this. I just want my old Siphamandla to come back so that he can once again live a normal life," she said.

At 1.45pm, surgeons cut through Siphamandla's chest. Fifteen minutes later, his beating heart was exposed. Using a variety of clamps and surgical tools, the surgeons stripped the pericardium, allowing the heart to beat freely.

A boy his age should have a pericardium between half a millimetre and a millimetre thick. Siphamandla's pericardium was 8mm.

Three hours later, the operation was complete and the surgeons closed his chest.

Dr Murray Davidson, a member of the Round Table association and part of Johannesburg Hospital's cardiothoracic department, said the foundation hoped to help many more children in need of surgery.

"This hospital has all the skills; what the foundation is doing is funding an additional ICU bed where children will recover and for disposable equipment used in the theatre.

"This partnership with the hospital means that the surgery costs far less than it would at a private hospital," he said.
source:www.int.iol.co.za

New services for heart patients to be launched

The Dubai Police and Ambulance Services Centre will soon launch new services for heart patients.

Khalifa Hassan bin Dari, Executive Director of Dubai Ambulance Services Centre, said that at the initiative of Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, Commander-in-chief of the Dubai Police, for the electronic link between the Operation Room of the Dubai Police and heart patients of critical condition, the Health Authority in Dubai is taking measures to implement the system soon after the completion of experiments and selection of suitable programmes.

He confirmed that the Rescue Service Centre officials are conducting experiments on the new service for heart patients.

Under the programme, the heart patients will be provided small size alarm devices, which will help them call the ambulance by pressing a button as officials in the Dubai Operation room will be able to determine the location of the patient using the GIS and send the ambulance to the patient.

The second system includes programming of the mobile phone of the patient, linking it to the operation room of the Dubai Police. On pressing the button of their mobile phones or calling 999 a message will go to a family member, emergency centre in addition to ambulance car which will be rushed to the patient’s house.

Dari said that the Ambulance Services Centre in collaboration with the Dubai Police is also preparing a database, including the heart patients with crucial cases so that rescue teams could reach the locations of the patients and have full information about the patient health condition.

The Ambulance Services Centre launched an Intensive Unit mobile cars last year which travel on Dubai roads to provide services to all patients.

The vehicles are well-equipped to transmit information about the heart patient’s blood pressure, diabetes and other data to the hospital.

The rescue officials have mobile phones so they can contact the emergency section of Rashid Hospital.
source:www.khaleejtimes.com