American Morning
Inside Dr. Gupta's operating room
By Danielle Dellorto, CNN Medical Producer
I wasn’t sure what to expect as I waited outside the employee parking lot of Grady Memorial Hospital Monday morning. My assignment for the day? Produce a story on Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s life outside of CNN – his life as a trauma neurosurgeon. For the past three years I’ve been producing stories for him – but this time he was my story.
He greeted our crew a little before 5 a.m. with a familiar smile and diet soda in hand. Wasting no time with chit-chat, he scurried into the hospital, quickly changed into scrubs, then was off to his “home away from home”, O.R. 14. He had three cases scheduled by the time we arrived – a brain surgery and two spinal fusions.
First up – clipping a ruptured brain aneurysm.
My heart raced as I stood on pins and needles watching a critical part of the operation, during which the patient had an interoperative brain bleed. “I always like to tell people we spend 99% of our preparation on the 1% of things that happen.” Sanjay’s team didn’t flinch. They knew she’d be losing a liter of blood in just seconds and to prevent disaster, they raced to stop the bleed. Mission accomplished. It was a scary 90 seconds for a bystander like myself watching it all go down, so what really struck me was how calm and focused his team was the entire time.
“When you have an aneurysm rupture like that and you are losing a liter of blood over several seconds, it makes any TV live shot you've ever done look not that scary. I know if I don’t get that thing stopped within a couple of minutes, the patient won’t survive,” he explained.
No doubt their neuro team is a well-oiled machine. It was especially fascinating to watch Dr. Gupta interact with his residents. “Many of my residents have never done cases like this so I get to show them for the first time how to do these procedures, which is pretty interesting for me and for them,” Gupta said. Between critical moments in the O.R. they chatted like comrades. Everything from rock concerts, to their love lives to real estate – joking around like old friends.
One thing that is “very important” during surgery: the music. I watched as they took turns flipping through the iPod. Dr. Gupta gave me his ultimate playlist for brain surgery: open with Gypsy Kings or Rise by Eddie Vedder and close the surgery with Coldplay’s Viva La Vida or Mr. Brightside. Solid picks, Doc!
The morning flew by fast. By 10am, Dr. Gupta and his team had already saved one life. By 10pm, that tally was up to three. Overall, it was incredibly exciting to not only see a whole other side of Sanjay on the job, but also see inside the human brain!
Want to see more in the weeks to come? Follow Sanjay on Twitter @sanjayguptacnn. He posts cool pics each week from the operating room!
U.S. patients try stem cell therapies abroad
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/06/03/art_stem_family.jpg caption="Sierra Journey Factor, 8, has a muscular disease that her mom, Shaylene Akery, hopes can be treated in China."]
By Drew Griffin and David Fitzpatrick
CNN Special Investigations Unit
TITUSVILLE, Florida (CNN) - It's shortly after 5 a.m. when the phone rings, and on the line is a clearly anxious and worried parent.
"Sierra is having a lot of problems tonight," Shaylene Akery tells a CNN producer. "We have to take her to the hospital, but we still want to talk to you about her trip to China."
Her daughter, Sierra Journey Factor, is 8 years old and has a terminal disease called Type 2 spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disorder that affects parts of the nervous system that control voluntary muscle movement. In addition, she has a restrictive lung disease and a kidney disorder. She has used a wheelchair since infancy.
Sierra's mother, her stepfather and her biological father, A.J. Factor, all know that Sierra is seriously ill. On the morning we met them, Sierra was treated at two hospitals before she was stabilized.
But the family is convinced of their next step - taking Sierra on an arduous trip to southern China, where they believe the little girl will be injected six times with stem cells during a 34-day stay. It's the kind of treatment not yet approved in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration.
Sierra's treatment will cost $26,500, which does not include the cost of travel and living for the extended family. Those costs would mean an additional $25,000, according to Akery.
"We are really walking into this blindfolded," Akery said. "It's scary, but everybody says it's so nice over there."
The family says it got most of its information from a Web site called China Stem Cell News, at stemcellschina.com, which boasts of dozens of anecdotal testimonials from loved ones who say their children or family members showed improvement after the stem cell treatments. The site offers no scientific evidence and no means of making contact except through a Web form. CNN used the form, but as of yet has received no reply.
Men have a biological clock?
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/05/25/carroll.bio.clock.art.jpg caption="CNN's Jason Carroll reports on a recent study that suggests men have their own biological clock."]
It has been happening for centuries – an older man taking a younger bride. Popular with kings in earlier times, in this day it is not uncommon with Hollywood royalty.
A 20-something-year-old I met tried to sum up the thinking on the male biological clock, saying “We don't have to deal with the whole, you know, estrogen issues. So men keep on pumping it out but women – they can't.”
The truth is there may be a male biological clock – and it’s ticking.
The headline from a recent study: Older fathers may mean lower IQs in their children.
Researchers found children born to 50-year-old fathers scored slightly lower on intelligence tests than children of a 20-year-old father, regardless of the mother's age. The researchers analyzed data from more than 33-thousand American children. The study's outcome is a hot topic in the blogosphere.
“I would hope that somehow it equalizes relationships of sexes,” says Lisa Belkin of the New York Times.
Belkin blogged about the study and wrote an essay titled "Your Old Man," for the New York Times. The response, she says, has been overwhelming.
“The men are getting really angry and the women are a little too gleeful… There were just hundreds and hundreds of people and you could just divide them into two categories based on gender,” says Belkin.
Now there is a new sense of urgency with some men.
Dr. Harry Fisch is a professor of urology. He reviewed the study and cautioned more testing needs to be done because the study did not follow children's intellectual development beyond age seven.
Cut your prescription drug costs
From CNN Personal Finance Editor Gerri Willis
Whether you're insured or not, the cost of prescription drugs is a serious problem. In a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, it was found that nearly 30 percent of adults say they hadn't filled a prescription because of the cost and about a quarter of people polled had split pills in two or skipped doses to make the medicine last longer. But there are ways that you can slash your prices. Some stores have discount pharmacy services.
For example, Kmart pharmacies have a 90 day generics program for $15, available anywhere in the country where there's a Kmart pharmacy.
Costco, Sam's Club and BJ's pharmacies often have competitive prices and membership is not required to use the pharmacy services.
And don't forget that the internet is a great tool for comparing prices.
Compare RX costs
One word of caution here: beware of fly-by-night sites, where your risk of getting counterfeit or tainted drugs rises. Look for sites that carry the "VIPPS" seal – it stands for verified internet pharmacy practice site -and is awarded by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy.
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