Wednesday, 11 April 2012

April 12, 2012 Clippings


Boy Kept Alive on Artificial Heart Undergoes Heart Transplant

Doctors in Britain managed to keep a three year old boy alive on an artificial heart for more than eight months before he was finally able to undergo a heart transplant surgery.

Joe Skerratt was fitted with a Berlin heart for 251 days as his heart was unable to properly pump the blood around his body. Skerratt was diagnosed with a condition known as dilated cardiomyopathy and needed help from an artificial heart until a heart transplant surgery took place.

Dr Alessandro Giardini, who is a consultant pediatric cardiologist at Great Ormond Street where the surgery took place, said that Joe was very lucky to find a suitable heart for the transplant surgery.

“There is a chronic shortage of donor organs for children in the UK and at any one time we have several children in the hospital awaiting a transplant. Lots of children wait years for an organ to become available and can very sadly die while they are doing so”, he said.


Source-www.medindia.net

12.04.2012



Older mothers likely to have twins: Research

Women who wait until their 30s to get pregnant are more likely to have twins, researchers say.

Compared to three decades ago, the number of twin births has now almost doubled in US.

One in 30 babies born in the US is now a twin, compared to one in 53 in 1980, according to a study by Michigan State University.

Scientists say a key factor in the increase is the number of women having fertility treatment because they have difficulty getting pregnant after the age of 30.

Doctors say the findings could have important health implications and costs because women having multiple births are more at risk.

“Prior to 1980, the incidence of women having twins in the US was stable at about two per cent of all births but it has risen dramatically in the past three decades,” the Daily Express quoted Dr Barbara Luke, who led the study, as saying.

She told a conference in Italy that the number of twin births increased for women of all ages but particularly for those aged over 30.

The number of triplets also jumped from one in every 651 babies in 2009 to one in 2,702 in 1980.


12.04.2012











All things are difficult before they become easy

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