Word: bones
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Addis Ababa. In 1985 and 1986 the rains were good for the first time since 1981. Though hunger persisted, no one was starving. When the rains came on schedule last June, it looked as if the nation would have a third year of good luck. But July was bone dry -- not a drop of water the entire month. Stubbornly hopeful, farmers replanted. In August the rain sputtered, then, late in the month, stopped. The crops withered and died...
Abusive behavior can range from intense psychological intimidation -- threats to limit physical freedom, withhold money or even kill family pets -- to bone-shattering physical violence. Worse, in about half to two-thirds of such cases, the mayhem spreads to children in the family. The death of seven- year-old Lisa Steinberg in New York City last month is widely believed to have been a result of beating by one or both of her adoptive parents. Experts think such violence is caused by stress, a history of abuse or an obsessive need for control. Says Author Fedders: "Rich men like...
...Susan Lazarchick, the decision to undergo an experimental knee transplant was frighteningly simple. A benign tumor the size of a grapefruit was rapidly consuming her right knee and shinbone. Doctors had offered her two other options: amputation, or a bone fusion, which would render her stiff-legged for the rest of her life. She chose the rarely performed transplant. Last week Orthopedic Surgeon Richard Schmidt at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia announced that he had transplanted an entire knee -- bones, cartilage, tendons, ligaments and all -- from an accident victim into the leg of the young...
...Lazarchick's case, the potential rewards seemed worth the gamble. "She was young, and we had a frozen graft that perfectly matched her joint," Schmidt says. The hospital's bone bank is one of several hundred nationwide. With prior consent, doctors routinely remove bones from patients who die suddenly, check them for infections such as hepatitis and AIDS, encase them in plastic and store them at -112 degreesF in freezers. Though the living tissue is killed by the extreme cold, the bone's structure survives. Thus, once surgeons implant the new graft, tissue rejection -- the unforgiving nemesis of most transplant...
...still immobilized by a cast, and the threat of infection deep within remains. "If the site gets infected, you lose the transplant," Schmidt warns. "It's way too early to tell if there are going to be any complications," says Dr. Steven Gitelis, director of the bone bank at Chicago's Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center. The once frozen ligaments and tendons may not properly hold the knee together, and the original cartilage may fail to cushion it from shocks. "I would wait at least a year to proclaim success," he adds. Even so, says Mankin...