Hadcorp News: March 24, 2008 - Florida High School Senior died from complications after breast augmentation

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Hadcorp News: March 24, 2008

PLASTIC SURGERY NEWS

West Boca High student dies from complications after plastic surgery

WPTV

West Palm Beach, FL, USA

Last Update: 6:11 pm

Reported By: WPTV Staff Updated 4:00pm

A West Boca Raton High School Senior died from complications after undergoing a breast augmentation, friends say.

18 year-old Kuleba underwent surgery last Friday and died suddenly.

She had a reaction to the anesthesia medication during surgery at an outpatient surgery center.

Medics rushed her to Delray Medical Center where she later died early Saturday morning.

Friends and family held a candlelight vigil for the West Boca Raton High senior Sunday night.There will be another vigil held tonight.

She was captain of the varsity cheerleading squad.

She was to attend the University of Florida and study to be a doctor.

We will have a live report on NewsChannel 5 at 5pm, 6pm, and 11pm newscasts.

Stretched hospitals paying for 'botched face ops'

Irish Independent

Dublin, Ireland

By Eilish O'Regan Health Correspondent

Monday March 24 2008

Overstretched public hospitals are footing the bill for a growing number of patients returning home after botched cosmetic surgery abroad.

The so-called "sun, sea and scalpel" patients -- who are lured by the promise of a holiday as well as "nip and tuck" surgery abroad -- are now becoming a burden for Irish hospitals.

The professional body representing plastic surgeons in Ireland, is now so concerned, it is conducting an audit to find out the extent of the problem.

The Irish Association of Plastic Surgeons has reported that in severe cases, these patients need to be admitted to a public hospital bed here for in-patient treatment following cosmetic surgery abroad.

The doctors said a key problem is the absence of post-operative care for a significant number of these patients after having procedures such as breast surgery or tummy tucks.

It is estimated at that least 5,000 men and women are travelling abroad for cosmetic surgery annually -- and another 10,000 go for dental work.

Popular destinations are Poland, Turkey, Greece, Thailand and countries in eastern Europe which offer cut-price packages, sometimes with a few days of sun included.But lack of follow up care is leading to infections and leaking wounds.

A tummy tuck -- which could cost around €5,000, would cost half that in Poland.

The most high-profile tragedy involving an Irish patient who was the victim of a botched face list, is the late Kay Cregan, a mother of two from Limerick, who died a few days after her operation in New York, in 2005.

It later emerged her surgeon, Dr Sachs, was known as "Dr Botch". He was removed from the medical register in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, the Association has also drawn up a new document outlining the need for regulation of private cosmetic surgery clinics in Ireland which are not answerable to any code of standards.

Key areas highlighted in the document submitted to the Department of Health and Medical Council include:

- A ban on payments to a clinic before a consultation with a surgeon.

- First consultations should be carried out with a doctor, not a nurse or counsellor.

- A specialist training programme for cosmetic surgeons to be set up.

- Doctors should make it clear to patients how qualified they are.

- Doctors suspended abroad should be banned from working in private clinics here.

- A ban on glamorous and misleading advertising of clinics featuring beautiful people -- pictures of the human body should be entirely outlawed.

The Department of Health is to wait until the Commission on Public Safety report s later this summer before deciding how it will licence all public and private hospitals here.

-Eilish O'Regan Health Correspondent

MEDICAL DEVICE NEWS

Medicare News

SeniorJournal.com

San , TX, USA

Fraud Grows as Private Managed Care Takes Over More Medicaid, Medicare Patients

Wall Street Journal looks at new types of fraud; CVS pays millions for over-billing Medicaid

March 19, 2008 – The Wall Street Journal today asserts that as the government shoves more Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries to private sector managed care plans, new types of fraud are emerging. This report hits on the same day as the report that the giant pharmacy chain CVS agreed to pay nearly $37 million to settle claims that it fraudulently billed Medicaid. The WSJ also examined the growing practice of hospitals to reuse medical devices that have designated for one time use.

Increase in Medicare, Medicaid Managed Care Plans Has Led to 'More Complex' Health Care Fraud, Wall Street Journal Reports

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday examined how as the private sector is increasingly providing more Medicare and Medicaid services, new types of fraud are "cropping up that are harder to spot, more complicated to prosecute and potentially more harmful to patients," prompting the federal government to increase scrutiny of managed care. States and the federal government began shifting Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries to managed care plans in the 1990s to control program costs, and many believed the shift also would reduce fraud because "companies would have strong incentives to prevent overbilling by doctors, hospitals and other medical providers -- and to avoid cheating the government themselves," the Journal reports.

However, some states reduced the number of health care fraud investigators, and a recent federal review of health programs for low-income children found that states mostly rely on HMOs to regulate themselves.

The Journal reports that traditional fraud prevention for government programs consisted of "policing doctors, hospitals, dialysis centers and the like to catch overcharges or billing for treatment never provided."

However, according to the Journal, "[m]anaged care fraudsters profit by ... shortchanging patients or physicians to cut costs while collecting preset fees from the government," as well as by "refus[ing] to enroll unhealthy people, skimp[ing] on paying doctors or deny[ing] patients care." Regulators say "they are realizing they must become more attuned to more-complex scams carried out by sophisticated corporations," the Journal reports.

The Journal also profiled several fraud cases in Pennsylvania, California, New York, Texas and Virginia that "have provided a wakeup call for regulators" and "illustrate the potential for fraud and authorities' growing understanding of its scope" (Francis, Wall Street Journal, 3/19).

Wall Street Journal Examines Cost-Reducing Practice of Reusing Some Products

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday examined efforts by some U.S. hospitals to reduce health care costs by recycling certain medical devices that have been labeled for single use. According to the Journal, the practice is legal as long as hospitals follow FDA regulations for reprocessing devices, such as scissors, clinical scrubs and sharp blades used by surgeons to cut through bones.

However, the Journal reports that the process, "which involves shipping devices to reprocessing facilities to be cleansed, sterilized and tested for reuse, has raised concerns about safety."

Manufacturers of the devices say their products are not designed to withstand the strong chemicals and sterilization methods used at reprocessing plants. In addition, devices with porous surfaces or small gaps could still contain traces of blood, tissue or other bodily fluids that could transmit viral and bacterial infections, manufacturers say.

Hospitals, reprocessing firms and environmental groups say that reprocessed devices are just as safe as new devices because of modern sterilization methods. Supporters of the practice also say that recycled devices cost 40% to 60% less and reduce medical waste at landfills by thousands of tons.

Kizer -- a consultant and former undersecretary for health at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, who testified last year at a congressional hearing on the issue -- said the agency could save as much as $30 million in 2008 by using reprocessed devices.

Kizer said, "Single-use labeling is a real scam for a lot of devices, and by not using reprocessed devices where possible, it is wasteful and not environmentally responsive, since these items have to be disposed of as biomedical waste."

He added, "The reuse of medical devices that are labeled for single use only is a well-established and safe practice regulated by the FDA and utilized by most of the top-ranked hospitals in the country."

In addition, a Government Accountability Office report released in January that analyzed eight years of FDA data concluded that there is no evidence reprocessed single-use medical devices increase health risks for patients.

As many as 100 single-use devices, or 2% of all single-use devices, currently are reprocessed for further use.

The Journal reports that while the GAO study "tilts the debate strongly in favor of reprocessing and opens the door to more widespread use," device manufacturers "are sticking to their guns" and are lobbying several states to pass legislation that would require hospitals and other care providers to obtain "informed consent" from patients before reprocessed devices are used in medical procedures (Landro, Wall Street Journal, 3/19).

GULF WAR SYNDROME

Pentagon admits postponing brain screenings

2.30pm GMT / 10.30am ET

United Kingdom

Ed Pilkington in New York guardian.co.uk

Tuesday March 18 2008

About this article

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Tuesday March 18 2008. It was last updated at 14:16 on March 18 2008.

The Pentagon has admitted that it delayed introducing a routine screening of troops returning from Iraq for mild brain injuries because it feared that the extent of the problem could mushroom to the scale of the Gulf War syndrome after the first Iraq war.

The head of the Pentagon's medical assessments division has told USA Today that he wanted to avoid another controversy as potentially huge as Gulf War syndrome.

He said the military feared announcing a screening programme would encourage troops to think they had a condition and make correct diagnosis more difficult.

"Some individuals will seek diagnosis from provider to provider to provider," Col said.

The first evidence of what is known as mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) was discovered among soldiers in Iraq just months after the invasion in March 2003.

By January 2006 federal scientists specialising in the condition were calling for immediate screening.

Yet the Pentagon is only now gearing up to implementing the screening process, which involves soldiers being asked a series of questions designed to indicate whether they are suffering symptoms.

Those symptoms include headaches, dizziness, memory loss, nausea and convulsions.

Over the five years of the Iraq war, the extent of the problem of TBI has become better understood, and it is now classed as a "signature injury" of the war. The injuries are caused largely by roadside bombs that can send concussion waves through the brain even at a distance.

An army survey of more than 2,000 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan suggested that about 11% showed signs of mild TBI, though some estimates have put it closer to 20%.

Since 2003, 1.6 million troops have served in Iraq alone, many of whom return to the US without any awareness of their condition and hence no treatment.

In Britain, the Ministry of Defence has admitted that about 500 personnel had suffered mild TBI. Like the Pentagon, the MoD is now considering planting sensors into soldiers' helmets to monitor the shock waves passing through them.

The delay in the Pentagon's screening programme has been fiercely criticised by politicians of both main parties and by the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force.

Depleted Uranium in Iraq cause soaring cancer rates among U.S. coalition military personnel and civilians alike

Canadian National Newspaper

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Iraqi doctors believe that depleted uranium is responsible for a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the region. Many researchers outside Iraq, and several U.S. veterans organizations, agree. Depleted Uranium (DU) has also resulted in Gulf War Syndrome, that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans.

Depleted uranium, known as DU, is a highly dense metal that is the by-product of the process during which fissionable uranium used to manufacture nuclear bombs and reactor fuel is separated from natural uranium. DU remains radioactive for about 4.5 billion years.

When a DU round hits its target, as much as 70 percent of the projectile can burn up on impact, creating a firestorm of ceramic DU oxide particles. The residue of this firestorm is an extremely fine ceramic uranium dust that can be spread by the wind, inhaled and absorbed into the human body and absorbed by plants and animals, becoming part of the food chain.

Once lodged in the soil, the munitions can pollute the environment and create up to a hundredfold increase in uranium levels in ground water, according to the U.N. Environmental Program.

MORE GULF WAR SYNDROME NEWS:

Over 70,000 deaths, and over 1 million disabilities among American soldiers attributed to Iraq Wars says U.S. government data (CANADA)

AGENT ORANGE

Lawyers to Stand By Vietnamese Agent Orange Victims Against US Firms

RedOrbit

Dallas, TX, USA

Posted on: Sunday, 23 March 2008, 09:00 CDT

Text of report in English by Vietnamese news agency VNA website

[unattributed article from the "Politics-Diplomacy" page: "Foreign Lawyers Vow To Stand By AO Victims"]

Hanoi (VNA) -Lawyers from the US and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers said they will continue standing by Vietnamese Agent Orange (AO) victims in their lawsuit against US chemical companies.

The lawyers are in Vietnam to work with the Vietnam Association of Victims of AO/dioxin (VAVA) regarding the association's lawsuit.

C. , a spokesman for the delegation of US lawyers, who represented the plaintiff in the lawsuit at the US lower and appeal courts, told a press briefing in Hanoi on March 21 that the US courts' decisions were completely wrong in both legal and ethical aspects. He said the use of defoliants containing dioxin had caused severe damages to thousands of US war veterans and millions of Vietnamese people.

affirmed that he would continue do his utmost along with VAVA to gain justice for AO victims.

According to the US lawyer, VAVA sent a petition to the US appeal court on March 7 to request re-consideration of its judgment. If VAVA's proposal is accepted, Vietnamese AO victims will have one more hearing before all the 13 judges of the lower and appeal courts. In case the appeal court does not accept VAVA's proposal, the victims will appeal to the supreme tribunal.

The lawsuit is of significance not only to Vietnamese and US people but also to the international community, said, adding that if no one is made to take responsibility to compensate the victims, the use of toxic chemicals will recur in another war and in another country.

Jitendra Sharma, President of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, said VAVA should further call for support from the world so that no one can reject the legitimate rights of the Vietnamese AO victims.

He revealed that his association will organize a seminar in Tokyo in May and the Vietnamese AO issue will be on the agenda.

VAVA Vice President-cum General Secretary Tran Xuan Thu also affirmed that Vietnamese AO victims are determined to pursue the lawsuit until justice is achieved.

VAVA representing Vietnam's AO victims began its lawsuit against 37 US chemical companies in January 2004 for the fact that these companies have produced toxic chemicals for the US Army to spray in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

The US lower court dismissed the petition at the hearing on March 10, 2005, saying that the defoliants that the US Army used during the war in Vietnam were not prohibited toxic weapons.

Five months later, VAVA appealed to the higher court and joined a hearing in June 2007. However, on February 22, 2008, the US appeal court dismissed the petition, reasoning that the defoliants were used to protect the US Army, not as weapons against civilians.

Statistics released by VAVA showed that from 1961 to 1971, the US Army sprayed 80 million litres of defoliants in Vietnam , including nearly 400 kilos of dioxin. Around 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to dioxin, with 3 million of them suffering health problems related to the exposure. -Enditem

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